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CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY. 



CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY 



BY 

ALEXANDER MICHIE 

AUTHOR OF "MISSIONARIES IN CHINA' 



BOSTON 

KNIGHT AND MILLET 

1900 



Copyright, igoo, 

By Knight and Millet 



\<\0O 

49222 



h-ibi'tu y of Gon<j>i*&9t 
|"*Vu, C0Pl££ KEcfc<*£0 

| SEP 19 1900 

Copyright wtry 



SECOND COPY. 

D^tvt,«*ri to 

OKDH D> VISION, 
OCT 13 1900 



F. H. Gilson Company 
Printers and Bookbinders 
Boston, U.S.A. 



Introduction. 



A few words of introduction to this volume 
may not be out of place, as the author and 
his writings are little known to American 
readers. Mr. Alexander Michie has been 
for nearly twenty years the correspondent of 
the London Times, resident in Peking. During 
that period he has enjoyed such advantages 
as come to the representative of so influential 
a journal. He has been brought into contact 
with not only the highest of Chinese official- 
dom, but with the representatives of foreign 
powers, many of whom have - been prominent 
figures in the game of Diplomacy so actively 
played in the far East. 

A careful observer, and a close student of 
all questions bearing upon the Chinese problem, 



vi Introduction, 

he knows whereof he writes, and in this 
volume has discussed with rare calmness and 
sobriety the many perplexing questions which 
have culminated in the present deplorable 
outbreak in China. 

This volume was published a few years 
since in Tien Tsin, reaching only a small 
circle of readers among the English speaking 
people of the East. Its merits entitle it to 
a wider reading, and there can be no more 
opportune occasion than the present to offer 
it to American readers, as a helpful aid to 
the formation of an enlightened public opinion 
on one of the burning questions of the hour. 

The Publishers. 



PREFACE. 

A publication which meets but qualified 
approval from esteemed friends may be thought 
to stand in need of an Apology. 

There seems to be some fear that the ten- 
dency of the following essay is to widen 
rather than to heal the breach by fostering 
Chinese prejudice against Christianity on the 
one hand and displeasing an influential section 
of the foreign public on the other. Beneath 
this apprehension may possibly be a latent feel- 
i ing that as regards the institutions of Christen- 
dom in the East, the rule for speakers and 
writers should be nil nisi bonum. But such im- 
plied immunity, if ever claimed in words, 
would not be conceded by one section of the 
Christian Church to another. 

Fully recognizing that there is a time as well 
as a place to speak and to be silent, the writer 



viii Preface. 

considers that the present is no time for reti- 
cence respecting matters which keep the rela- 
tions between Chinese and foreigners in a state 
of dangerous tension, but that on the contrary 
it is just the time for plain speaking on these 
burning questions. We Western nations stand 
in a position of peculiar moral responsibility 
towards China. She has not sought us, but 
we her. She does not press her religion or 
her polity on us, but we press ours on her. 
In such a relationship the onus of justification 
necessarily rests on the stronger who imposes 
his will on the weaker ; and where, as in the 
present case, no competent neutral arbiter ex- 
ists it becomes the duty of the aggressor him- 
self, if he desires to be just, to assume, as far 
as may be, the functions of such ideal referee, 
and to give a patient consideration to all the 
pleas, substantial or flimsy, advanced by, or on 
behalf of, the weaker side. 

This obligation, which has been understood 
and loyally discharged in regard to such tangi- 
ble matters as trade, carries tenfold weight 
where moral relations are concerned; and those 
who resolve to support religion, among an alien 



Preface* ix 

people, by force, owe it to themselves to con- 
sider well both what they do, and how they do 
it. Errors in common affairs seldom sink so 
deep or spread so wide as to be irremediable, 
but mistakes in propagating and establishing 
religion may quickly pass beyond remedy, and 
bear consequences beyond calculation. For 
its transcendency involves misconception and 
misdirection ; its purity gives the measure of 
its susceptibility to contamination ; while its 
hold of the inner feelings of humanity diffuses 
and renders indelible whatever taint it may 
contract from its surroundings. Hence the 
tenacity of opinions and observances, even of 
a trivial character, which have once become in- 
corporated with any religious cult. Hence 
also the difficulty of religious reform as com- 
pared with other kinds. 

Obviously then an essence of such subtlety 
demands the finest tact on the part of those 
who have the handling of it, in whatever capa- 
city. And though it is not possible, for want 
of a competent and acknowledged authority, to 
protect the Christianity as we guard the purity 
of the vaccine lymph which is imported into 



x Preface, 

the country, it ought not to be too much to 
expect that the grosser elements of untruth, 
injustice and vulgar strife should be, as far as 
possible, eliminated alike from friendly and un- 
friendly association with the introduction into 
China of what is justly claimed to be the crown 
and consummation of the world's religions. 

To those, if there be any such, who think 
the cause of religion may be served by hiding 
any part of the record it would be difficult to 
give an answer which is not already patent in 
the exceeding frankness of both the Hebrew 
and the Christian Scriptures. The fear of tell- 
ing the Chinese too much would be in any case 
an idle fear, seeing the books of history and of 
observation lie wide open. Who, for example, 
shall prevent them from discussing the episode 
of Uganda ? The recent dictum of an African 
missionary that " influence which is gained at 
the price of keeping unpleasant truths in the 
background is not worth having " has a wide 
application. No lasting understanding is likely 
to be attained between China and the Western 
world without unreserved communications 
touching matters of fact, and the dropping of 



Preface* xi 

all hypocritical pretences on both sides, y No 
apology therefore ought to be necessary for 
even a perfunctory effort to expose misunder- 
standing, though it is at the same time devoutly 
to be wished that some competent hand, say, a 
missionary of light and leading, with experi- 
mental knowledge for his guide, may take up 
and develop the subject in a manner worthy of 
the great interests involved. 

The issue at stake, in the conception of the 
writer, is nothing less than the mode in which 
Christianity shall be introduced to the largest 
population in the world ; whether it shall en- 
ter in the gentleness of its true nature, like 
showers on thirsty soil ; or with storm and 
cataclysm, leaving legacies of hate to future 
generations. Or rather such would have been 
the issue had matters not already gone beyond 
the bounds of so simple a formula. The ques- 
tion is now practically reduced to this, — 
whether the advance of Christianity shall 
approximate more to the one or the other of 
these alternative modes. Even in this atten- 
uated form the subject is of serious import; 
for considering the flatness of the Chinese life 



xii Preface* 

and the general poverty of its ideals the regen- 
erating force of Christianity seems to be the 
thing of which China stands most desperately* 
in need. " There is now in the world/' says 
Mr. Lilly in a recent work, "what we may 
call the Christian temper, with all its charities 
and courtesies, a temper of self-devotion to 
some worthy cause, of self-effacement for some 
high end, of fortitude and forgiveness, of 
purity and pitifulness, of generosity and gentle- 
ness." If to bring the Chinese within the in- 
fluence of such a " temper " be an object 
worthy of all sacrifice, it behoves those con- 
cerned to see to it that the very considerable 
sacrifices — in money and in precious lives, in 
political principle and in international comity 
— which are now being made be not operating 
as hindrances to the desired process. 

Needless to say it is beside the author's 
purpose to discuss Christianity in any way 
whatsoever. Only the vehicles and wrappage 
of it are touched on, and these no further than 
seemed necessary to clear the ground for the 
political survey. The theme is not " China " 
nor " Christianity," still less the two combined, 



Preface* xiii 

but only the thin ragged line of actual or 
potential contact between them, external to 
both. So much, and no more of the colliding 
surfaces is glanced at as was requisite for a 
superficial diagnosis of the collision. It will 
be for the courteous reader, who may deem it 
worth while, to judge whether the prescribed 
limit has been overstepped. 

The motive of the essay is to draw atten- 
tion to the breach of continuity between the 
minds of the several high contracting parties 
under whose combined authority the propa- 
gation of Christianity is carried on in China, 
and to suggest the want of a more harmonious 
adjustment between the parts of a complex 
politico-religious machine made up of hetero- 
geneous elements. The present is a natural 
sequel to the tract on "Missionaries in China" 
published last year. In that essay the promi- 
nence was given to the methods of the propa- 
ganda ; in this the broader considerations 
which affect the policy of governments and 
administrative bodies are more particularly 
dwelt upon. The subjects overlap to a cer- 
tain extent^ but repetitions have been as much 



xiv Preface* 

as possible avoided. The notes, somewhat 
promiscuously thrown in while the sheets were 
in the press, have been culled, with scarcely an 
exception, from casual readings after the text 
was written ; and they thus possess, for the 
author at least, a certain corroborative and 
corrective value. 

No one can be more sensible than the 
author of the lame and the almost negative 
conclusion to which his meandering excursion 
has inevitably led. The fiction of looking 
through the glasses of a fin-de-sthle Chinese 
politician is clumsy and halting, and perhaps 
this attempt to "see ourselves as others see 
us " attains no nearer to a true presentment of 
the reality than those school-room diagrams 
which profess to show how the Earth looks as 
viewed from the Moon. But it possesses this 
advantage over them that it can be tested and 
its blemishes exposed. 

A. M. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. State Problems and the Chinese way of 

SOLVING THEM . I 

II. Foreign Relations 8 

III. Foreign Religion 14 

IV. Exoteric Christianity 25 

V. Christianity in China 54 

VI. The Sources of Chinese Opposition . 70 

VII. The Taiping Rebellion 93 

VIII. Anti-Christian Literature 101 

IX. Christianity in Japan 108 

X. Practical Considerations 112 

XI. Relation of Christianity to People, 

Literati, and Imperial Government . 138 

XII. Administrative Machinery 152 

XIII. Mutual Obligations 163 

APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX 

1 183 

II I9O 

III 226 

XV 



China and Christianity. 

%pr* Qfi** $£& 



STATE PROBLEMS AND THE CHINESE WAY OF 
SOLVING THEM. 

In common with all other states China has 
to grapple with the two problems of internal 
polity and external relations ; but she treats 
them with a patience and a passiveness pecu- 
liarly her own, which has constantly to be 
borne in mind in estimating the motives of her 
action in any given circumstances. Foreign 
precedents have little or no weight with China, 
and hers are for the most part as far removed 
from European conventional ways as the East 
is distant from the West. It is, however, the 
misfortune of the Chinese Government and 
people to be weighed in a balance which they 
have never accepted ; and to have their short- 



2 China and Christianity. 

comings, so ascertained, made the basis of re- 
clamations of varying degrees of gravity. 
Naturally, therefore, the bill of grievances from 
time to time presented by foreign nations fails 
to reach the conscience of China, just as the 
unwearied criticisms from without on her ne- 
glect of good government fall absolutely dead. 
The want of the receptive faculty renders the 
result of all such representations as blank as 
a photograph on an unprepared plate. 

In the case of her external relations, how- 
ever, force may be and has been used to supply 
the lack of reasoned conviction, and a me- 
chanical compliance with Western practices, 
within narrow limits, thereby more or less es- 
tablished. But so far as it is against nature, 
so far is such conformity liable to break down 
unless the machinery which produced it is kept 
in constant motion. 

In their academical discussions foreigners 
usually take the fullest cognizance of this state 
of things, and those of them who do not come 
into direct contact with the Chinese are per- 
haps disposed to make even undue allowance 
for the hardships of their position. Those, on 



State Problems* 3 

the other hand, who are placed at the points 
of international collision are in the habit of 
insisting on the Chinese people and govern- 
ment being measured absolutely by Western 
standards as the only condition under which 
working relations can be maintained. Indeed, 
the pioneers of commerce and Christianity, 
strung up to a high pitch of zeal for the sue- , 
cess of their respective schemes, require the 
Chinese to submit, in strict accordance with 
treaty of course, to demands which could not 
even be named to any other sovereign State. 
And they seem to expect not only immediate 
compliance, but cheerful and hearty compliance. 
Dr. Griffith John, for example, in his able 
statements of the missionary case, makes a 
special grievance of the want of alacrity which 
the Chinese show in obeying the behests of 
foreign powers. Though knowing full well 
that he and his cause are only maintained in 
China by external force overruling the settled 
policy of the Government, based on the inter- 
ests of the lettered class and the convictions 
of the people, he nevertheless, in his commu- 
nications to the papers in China and England, 



4 China and Christianity* 

makes it a serious part of his accusation of the 
Chinese Government that the foreign Ministers 
had to complain of the great difficulty with 
which they obtained the promulgation of the 
Imperial Edict condemning the populace for 
their attacks on missionaries in 1891. Let the 
case be imagined of an alien propaganda in 
Kazan or Kieff being set upon by a posse of 
popes and ruffians, and then reflect on the kind 
of cc difficulty " a German or English Minister 
would experience in obtaining the publication 
of an Ukase condemning wholesale the assail- 
ants and lauding the strangers as immaculate ! 
Though China must be held to her engage- 
ments, there always will be a difference be- 
tween the manner of fulfilment of a voluntary 
obligation and of compliance with one imposed 
by force, especially if it runs counter to na- 
tional feeling ; and there is wisdom in frankly 
recognizing what cannot in any case be disputed 
or altered. 1 

1 The despatches of the British Minister published in the 
Riots Blue Book, 1892, and the press criticisms thereon, are 
pitched in the same tone of astonishment at the reluctance and 
insincerity of the Chinese — as if these were quite new discov- 
eries ! 



State Problems. 5 

Perhaps, however, all these pioneers are 
right, for life to each one of them is too short 
to wait for the Chinese mind to be educated 
up to the point of willing assent to their vari- 
ous aggressive pretensions ; and too short for 
them even to attempt to comprehend the 
Chinese way of looking at things. Hence, 
with them, " force," in its most direct form, 
is the only cc remedy " within reach. While, 
however, admitting that such may be the only 
safe and practical ground which the advanced 
guards of foreigners can wisely take up, in the 
actual circumstances, there is behind and around 
them, though aloof from the heat and dust of 
the struggle, a whole atmosphere of opinion 
of varying density in which ideas are generated 
as clouds are formed in the clefts of the moun- 
tains, and where influences slowly gather which 
eventually shape the ends of the toilers in the 
valleys, rough hew them how they may. Such 
phenomena, merely to take two current in- 
stances, as the anti-opium and the Indian 
factory labour agitations which are fermenting 
in England, and seemingly gaining force, with- 
out reference to the interests or opinions of the 



6 China and Christianity* 

parties directly concerned, may serve to re- 
mind all classes of men who are too much 
absorbed in their own calling to give full 
consideration to aught but the exigencies of 
the day, that, independently of them, there 
may be latent forces eventually capable of 
over-ruling them in unforeseen ways, for good 
or evil. 

The principle on which the Government of 
China regulates its national affairs, internal and 
external, is, as has been hinted, that of mas- 
terly inactivity. Chinese statesmen and place- 
hunters do not find congenial occupation in 
remodelling the constitution, as is the case in 
some other countries, but rather acquiesce in the 
distempers of the body politic like an easy-going 
man who never seeks the aid of a physician. 
Everything is left to nature, and when matters 
go wrong they are usually allowed to right 
themselves as best they may. Hence the 
Chinese — for people and Government are the 
same — are seen to suffer abuses of every kind 
to consume their substance with the same fatal- 
istic apathy with which they meet natural 
calamities. They recoil from political experi- 



State Problems- 7 

mentation, and oppose to all innovations an 
immense silent resistance, especially in cases 
where they cannot form a distinct concep- 
tion of the real scope or tendency of the 
change. 



8 China and Christianity* 

II. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS. 

It is the same patient imperturbable spirit 
which directs the foreign policy of China. She 
makes no plunges, but advances, when forced, 
by tentative and reluctant steps, with the skid 
on every wheel. Her constitution, the out- 
come of the empiricism of many ages, and her 
natural temperament, of which it is the em- 
bodied expression, combine in a harmony of 
slow movements, and excessive deliberation. 
So consistently, indeed, does this characteristic 
dominate governmental action that the dilatory 
precautions which are taken to meet impending 
changes not only fail to overtake the object, 
but through their untimeliness, actually create 
new and gratuitous dangers. 

It is only on some such theory as this that 
the confused and irritating position of her 
foreign relations seems explicable. N The West- 
ern nations did not give China the time neces- 



Foreign Relations* 9 

sary for her to think, but rushed her into 
action for which she was unprepared, which 
she did not understand, and for which she has 
to suffer whatever may be the consequences of 
the blind bargain she was compelled to make. 

Had the Government of China been fully 
acquainted with the character of the Western 
nations it would perhaps have run all risks to 
exclude them from the territory, absolutely and 
forever. Not even the modicum of a strangled 
commerce such as that carried on at Macao and 
Canton, nor the Russian prisoners entertained, 
with their priests and teachers, for 200 years in 
Peking, nor the coquetting with the Catholic 
missionaries during the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth, and even the later centuries, would 
have been permitted. Only by complete seclu- 
sion could China hope to remain what she had 
been, or even to secure her stability as a united 
and homogeneous nation. But having small 
conception of either the power or the spirit of 
the Christian nations, and like statesmen all 
over the world, dealing from hand to mouth 
with the circumstances of the day, the rulers 
of China admitted the foreigner in the North 



io China and Christianity* 

and the South, in his threefold character — 
political, commercial, and religious. 

There are intuitions which precede knowl- 
edge ; and as the instincts of certain animals 
enable them, even without experience, to rec- 
ognize the hereditary enemies of their race, so 
the advent of foreigners seems to have inspired 
the Chinese with a certain indefinable fear, 
begotten perhaps of their traditional experience 
in dealing with their territorial neighbours. 
But the strangers were so insignificant and so 
deferential that curiosity overcame caution, and 
transitory obscured permanent interests, and so 
it came about that instead of shutting them 
out of the country the Emperors were content 
to place the foreigners under close surveillance. 
The fate of their empire was probably in a 
certain sense as much sealed by those innocent 
admissions as was that of the Ottoman empire 
in Europe by the first capture of Azoff by the 
Czar of Muscovy in 1696, though in both 
cases the process of disintegration may be indefi- 
nitely protracted. Only a small leak through 
the reservoir, it is true, but a fissure ever widen- 
ing, and with the pressure of incumbent water 



Foreign Relations* n 

ever increasing, certain to end in bringing down 
the whole flood on the valley below, either in 
the form of devastating torrents or in safe and 
beneficent streams, as fate and the nature of 
the preparations for its reception may deter- 
mine. The regulation of the inflow has hitherto 
proved too much for the Chinese. Perceiving 
the potency of the new force, they dreamed of 
schemes of expulsion so ill conceived that each 
step taken to repress the foreign invasion in- 
variably resulted in opening new avenues for 
its advance, every concession made to the 
foreigner serving but to stimulate his appetite 
for more. 

The actual situation resulting from this des- 
ultory contest is naturally regarded with differ- 
ent eyes by the various parties concerned. 
There are doubtless foreigners who would 
anticipate even the break-up of the empire 
with the kind of weird glee with which wanton 
boys hail conflagrations, and some who, while 
they would sincerely deplore such a catas- 
trophe, would still think even that price not 
too dear to pay for the progress and enlighten- 
ment of the people who would survive the dis- 

i 



12 China and Christianity. 

solution of the empire, and who represent the 
ultimate interests to be served. Among the 
Chinese themselves, too, diversities of senti- 
ment on the subject of imperial unity and per- 
manence may easily be credited. But the 
government, the governing classes, both pres- 
ent and future, have the one burden laid upon 
them, by the meanest as well as by the noblest 
considerations that can rule the actions of men, 
of preserving the empire, the dynasty, and the 
existing polity intact as they have received 
them ; and should that come to be visibly 
hopeless, then at least to make as long a fight 
in their defence as possible. Among patriotic 
statesmen animated by this common aim, there 
will of course still be divisions according to 
mental calibre and natural temperament, quite 
sufficient, under given conditions, to dislocate 
the machinery of government and reduce it to 
impotency. Some would resist not invasion 
merely, but all innovation, as such, and would 
defend the old regime in all its parts with their 
last breath ; while others would encourage even 
sweeping reforms in order thereby to gain 
strength to resist effectually what may be found 



Foreign Relations* 13 

resistible. By a miracle of regeneration, of 
which, however, not the faintest symptom is yet 
apparent, the threatening danger might be 
averted, and a true reforming party in the 
country might thus render to the State the 
most essential service. 

But whatever differences may divide them as 
to their methods, all parties probably unite in 
the aim of conserving the State from every 
change imposed on It from without, whether 
by the direct force of arms or by the spread of 
the subtler though not less potent social forces. 
It is incumbent, therefore, on those who are 
responsible for the peace and honour of the 
Chinese empire, before all things to acquaint 
themselves accurately with the nature of the 
complex foreign forces which are pressing on 
it from every side. 



i4 China and Christianity* 



III. 

FOREIGN RELIGION. 

Of all the elements of which the invading 
force is made up none is more formidable than 
the religious element, from which the ultimate 
danger to the political fabric is the most likely to 
arise. Already the religion of the foreigners 
has shown itself fearlessly aggressive, and it 
possesses faculties of expansion and intensity 
which, if allowed free play, may in no long 
time cause the religious to tower over all the 
other foreign interests in the demands which it 
will make on Chinese hospitality. The rela- 
tions of the government to the foreign re- 
ligion, or religions, are so far simplified that 
there can henceforth be no question of exclud- 
ing them, as they are already established in 
fact, and protected in law, by treaty. What re- 
mains for the Chinese government to consider 
is how to deal with these religions so as to get 
out of them the greatest amount of good, and 



Foreign Religion* 15 

to minimize the evils incidental to their propa- 
gation. For which purpose as careful a study 
as the circumstances permit should be made of 
the religious system which is forcing itself with- 
out ceremony wherever it can find an opening 
throughout the empire. 

The international credentials of Christianity, 
as registered in the various treaties of 1858 on 
which toleration was stipulated for its teachers 
and followers, are simple in the extreme: it in- 
culcated virtue and taught men to do as they 
would be done by. But the Chinese had their 
own experience of the inadequacy of this de- 
scription, which, moreover, would be rejected 
as insufficient by most Christians ; and it is 
perhaps to be regretted that the foreign nego- 
tiators, who were solely responsible for the 
phraseology, should have condescended to 
apologetic expressions, since the treaties were 
made in their hour of victory. The partiality 
of the description was not calculated to remove 
prejudice from the Chinese mind as to the 
merits of the religion, a prejudice which would 
naturally operate with renewed force as soon as 
the grip of the soldier was relaxed. Perhaps, 



1 6 China and Christianity* 

however, this is of little importance now that 
the statesmen of China are called upon to form 
their opinion of the Christian religion from 
fresh data, and to judge therefrom of the char- 
acter of the protection to which it may be en- 
titled. On one side the representatives of 
Christianity challenge examination of what they 
promulgate, and on the other the exigencies of 
the State demand that the challenge be taken 
up by the public men of China ; and they will 
evade it at their own peril and that of the 
common weal. 

But what must be the embarrassment of a 
Chinese statesman who approaches this inquiry 
in a serious spirit? If he asks — what and 
where is Christianity ? the first answer will be 
a babel of conflicting, nay, mutually destructive 
claims from a hundred different quarters, each 
claimant calling aloud, Lo, it is here ! Close 
attention to their utterances would show him 
that a doctor of Christianity can hardly deliver 
himself of an exegesis, however chiselled and 
chastened, but some other teacher of equal 
eminence will promptly assail it. It might 
perhaps occur to a laborious-minded heathen 



Foreign Religion* 17 

to try to discover Christianity by the exhaus- 
tive process of placing the contradictions of its 
rival exponents * over against each other, and 
by cancelling out all the propositions which 
were at variance, attain at last to the unchal- 
lengeable quintessence. But the residuum, 
though in reality vital, would, to the apprehen- 
sion of such a man, be so intangible as to sug- 
gest doubt of the accuracy of the analysis. If, 
dazed by the discords of its miscellaneous 
professors, he should think of harking back to 
the fountain-head with the view of seeking to 
understand Christianity by searching the rec- 



1 " How much harm has been done by the jealousy and en- 
mity between Lutherans and Calvinists in the time of the 
Reformation in Germany, between Episcopalians and Dissenters 
in England, and in our mission work in China by the term-ques- 
tion controversy, and the separation caused by it. Human pas- 
sion and sin, sometimes misnamed ' conscience,' lies beneath all 
these eruptions of human nature." — Dr. Faber. 

" Protestantism is not only a veritable Babel but a horrible 
theory, and an immoral practice which blasphemes God, degrades 
man, and endangers Society." — Cardinal Cuesta's Cate- 
chism (1872), cited by Prof. Schaff. 

" Dr. Elder Cumming of Glasgow draws attention to the 
great evils of the day, and especially to the prevalent indifference 
to the growth of the Romish Church." — Messenger-, April, 



1 8 China and Christianity. 

ords of its origin, still it is doubtful if complete 
satisfaction would be attained, for he might 
easily fail to discover such correspondence be- 
tween the teachings of its Founder and the 
practices of its modern professors as would 
conclusively establish their identity ; and he 
might argue therefrom that the thing which is 
popularly called Christianity is something dif- 
ferent from that which was revealed by Christ, 
or his immediate successors. 

It is assumed of course that the inquirer is 
not endowed with the spiritual perception 
which would enable him to penetrate the 
barriers and uncover the divine spark which 
the grossest forms have never been able wholly 
to extinguish, though they have wofully ob- 
scured it. Consequently he can only make an 
objective study of the phenomena and their 
outward effects which is, indeed, all that any 
public man in any country is called on to 
do. For, no matter what his private beliefs 
or sympathies may be, they must, in every 
loyal statesman, be strictly subordinated to the 
mundane interests of the State, as a state. To 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Were a 



Foreign Religion* 19 

responsible Chinese official even converted to 
Christianity he would be bound in honour and 
in fidelity to his trust to suppress his personal 
feelings when legislating for, or administering 
the laws respecting Christianity ; and he would 
damage the cause of his creed itself were he 
to transgress that rule. 

So far as we have followed him, therefore, 
negative results only have rewarded the search 
of our Chinese inquirer. There still remain, 
however, two wide fields of research open to 
him. One is the external history of the growth 
of Christianity ; and the other is the observa- 
tion of modern Christendom ; both of which, 
through the spread of general education, are 
coming within the scope of Chinese scrutiny. 

Whoever enters on such an inquiry soon 
discovers that^t is not Christianity that he has 
to concern himself with, but Christians, a very 
different matter ; and it is not even Christians, 
as individual men or citizens, but the Church, 
in its innumerable forms, with infinite powers 
of reproduction. It is not in fact a religious 



20 China and Christianity. 

problem in the true sense of the word that 
presses on China, but a politico-eeclesiastical 
question ; the alleged rights of societies of 
men who, having adopted certain religious 
tenets, base thereon their claim to special civil 
privileges. That is a clear deduction alike 
from historical records and contemporary ob- 
servation. 

It is not uncommon, and it is moreover 
perfectly fair, for Christian propagandists to 
claim modern Europe as voucher for the mer- 
its of their religion ; although it may appear 
to be bringing forward the strength and mag- 
nificence of the kingdoms of the earth to attest 
the power of the kingdom emphatically de- 
clared to be " not of this world." It is, how- 
ever, a plea better calculated to confirm the 
allegiance of adherents than to carry complete 
conviction to the mind of an unsympathetic 
spectator. Our imaginary Chinese inquirer, 
for example, might ask, as others have done, 
whether blue eyes and red hair have not some- 
what to do with the progress of Europe ; 
whether Christianity be not in its full develop- 



Foreign Religion* 21 

ment as much the consequence as the cause of 
Western civilization, the two reacting on each 
other. And he might even allege drawbacks 
to the perfection of European society, as cer- 
tain Chinese in fact have done, not without a 
superficial show of success. The elevation of 
women, to select the commonest item in the 
list of the social triumphs of Christianity, — 
which, however, it may be contended, is an 
achievement not wholly Christian, but partly 
Teutonic — while it has conferred immeasur- 
able benefits on society, has not been obtained 
without the payment of a price, as every news- 
paper and novel of the day testify. 

The morality of trade supplies a more gener- 
ally intelligible — though in fact a quite falla- 
cious — test, and on that ground we have it 
on the authority of the manager of a great 
Banking Corporation that the Chinese stand 
well. In other departments of life they fall 
decidedly short of at least the modern standards 
of Christendom, as for instance in the bar- 
barity of their practices in war, and in judicial 
proceedings. 

The radical difference, however, between the 



22 China and Christianity* 

Christian and non-Christian people of zW 
world shows itself rather in the progressive 
vigour of the one as contrasted with the dull 
and languorous resignation of the other ; and 
this is a distinction which is visible at first 
sight. A learned Oriental, not Chinese nor 
Christian, once remarked to the writer that the 
immense difference between Buddhism and 
Christianity might be seen in the streets of 
Peking as compared with those of Paris. Nor 
is it on the mere passive virtues that any 
advocate would rest the superiority of the 
Christian over all other systems, but rather on 
the energy of its positive philanthropy and 
the principle of self-sacrifice which drives the 
vast benevolent machinery of Christian coun- 
tries, and to which there is nothing at all cor- 
responding in the non-Christian world. This 
could hardly escape any candid observer of 
facts. 1 

1 " More than once I have heard a patient say, ' There is 
no such love as this in all China.' " — China Med. Journal. 

Organized philanthropy all over the world is, for the most 
part, directly connected with active Christianity; and in all 
schemes of help for the Chinese, as in schools, hospitals, famine 
relief, it is the Christian missionaries who prompt the movement 
and who alone can be relied upon for any sustained effort. 



Foreign Religion* 23 

The manifest strength of the Western na- 
tions is, however, calculated to make a deeper 
impression on the mind of an average Oriental 
than their moral superiority. And China, at 
its wit's end to find means of defending itself, 
would doubtless accept Christianity with eager- 
ness if it were but persuaded that strength was 
a transferable commodity which would be im- 
ported with the religion. But to import that 
which nourishes strength is not necessarily to 
acquire strength. Much depends on the powers 
of assimilation which, until proved, must re- 
main uncertain, and can, in this case, only be 
proved by experiments which bar retreat. It 
is with religion as with material civilization, the 
form without the spirit would be a dead and 
useless thing, of which the present condition of 
the new Chinese navy may be cited as a case in 
point. 

But without accepting in full the proposition 
sometimes offered, in good faith, to China that 
she would become strong by becoming Chris- 
tian, Chinese statesmen will nevertheless do 
well to trace the steps by which the nations of 
the West have attained to their present emi- 



24 China and Christianity* 

nence in arts and arms, and they will certainly 
derive advantage from the study of the long 
and sanguinary struggles by which the various 
States have carved their way through barbarism 
like African explorers cutting tracks through 
the dark forest into the open light. 



Exoteric Christianity* 25 



IV. 

EXOTERIC CHRISTIANITY. 

The conditions under which Christianity 
first made its way in the Western world natur- 
ally suggest comparison with its present relations 
to China. The analogy between the old em- 
pire of Rome, and the existing Chinese empire 
is, indeed, obvious, but the circumstances de- 
termining the attitude of the respective States 
towards the Christian system are so discrepant 
that unless the qualification " exceptions ex- 
cepted " be kept constantly in mind misleading 
inferences may easily be drawn from it. Rome 
made the acquaintance of Christianity as an in- 
fant of unsuspected potentialities ; China en- 
counters a full grown giant with a long dramatic 
history. Such a contrast puts parallelism out 
of the question ; while that decisive new factor, 
the support of the modern propaganda by some 
half-dozen of the greatest military powers, al- 
most invalidates comparison between the con- 



16 China and Christianity* 

dition of the modern Church and that of the 
friendless followers of Him whose kingdom 
was not of this world. 

The most definite impression which the 
progress of Christianity in the early centuries 
of its growth would be likely to make on a 
quite disinterested mind would probably be 
that of the radical strength of a movement 
which, through the faith and fervour of its 
adherents, had proved itself irresistible ; an 
impression not altogether reassuring as to the 
political fate of nations on whom such a heavy 
stone might fall. The Christians, while yet a 
feeble band, would be seen stretching out their 
hands to grasp at power, and by sheer force of 
will and cohesion actually obtaining it, and 
gradually gaining control of the affairs of the 
State. The Christian subjects of the empire 
of the world would be observed indifferent to 
its decline, and if not actively accelerating, at 
least doing little to arrest its fall, and even- 
tually entering on possession of the escheated 
estate, being the only capable men. One prac- 
tical deduction which a Chinaman might draw 
from these events would be that the old bottles 



Exoteric Christianity* 27 

were hardly good enough to hold such strong 
wine; and another, that if, at the end of 1900 
years, Christianity can boast of her social tri- 
umphs, they have been gained at the cost of 
the philosophies and civilization which previ- 
ously existed. 1 Reflections of this kind may 
well suffice to put the statesmen of an empire 
as yet unchristianized on their guard in face of 
so great a force, and to stir them to deep in- 
quiry into its nature, aims, and methods. They 
are not, however, called upon to weigh the re- 
mote results of Christianity ; for the immedi- 
ate present and the near future more than tax 
the statesman's capacity for practical excogita- 
tion ; nor has he any mission beyond his own 
State. The ultimate good of the human race 
is no concern of his ; and mankind at large will 
do better without his gratuitous solicitude. 

It would be interesting to know the musings 
of a Chinese Emperor who could place him- 
self in imagination in the shoes of one of 
the Caesars of the first or second centuries. 

1 " The most serious trouble for Japan at present is the extinc- 
tion which has necessarily befallen her old code of morals and 
ethics in the presence of the new civilization." — Japan Mail. 



28 China and Christianity ♦ 

Could they have foreseen the future how would 
they have demeaned themselves towards the 
nascent religion ? It is permissible to suppose 
that if the Antonines had really understood 
Christianity they must have yielded personally 
to its claims, and yet, had its future course 
been revealed to them, they must, in duty to 
the empire as an emperor would regard it, 
have extinguished it as a society. Could a 
sincere Christian then persecute the Christian 
Church ? It would be a paradox, perhaps, but 
scarcely a contradiction, for between personal 
religion and the pretensions of an ambitious 
corporation there is the clearest distinction. 
And was not the history of the Church for 
many centuries the unfolding of continuous 
divergence from the precepts and the practices 
of its Founder, who nevertheless in some 
fashion or other retained and retains the alle- 
giance of all sections of the universal Church ? 
Here in fact is the difficult question : how the 
mixed bodies of self-styled Christians, such as 
we see them in the world to-day, make good 
their title to the name. 

Between the spirituality of the religion of 



Exoteric Chris tianity* 19 

Christ, its elevating, purifying, and vivifying 
power over individual men — in other words, 
between the personal piety of Christians — and 
the assumptions of collective Christianity, there 
is a gulf as wide as the world. Whether hap- 
pily or unhappily, the two have been so joined 
together that no man can now sunder them ; 
and they must in practice be treated as one. 
It is with Christians as with political and other 
combinations: the- individual character of the 
members is subdued to the interests, or dog- 
mas, or principles of the whole body. Taken 
separately they may be modest, truthful, and 
charitable, while collectively they may be con- 
strained to approve actions of an opposite kind 
such as individually they would condemn. 
Though, therefore, Christians, like other men, 
invariably — and quite naturally — put forward 
their innocent side as their title to considera- 
tion, it must be repeated that that is not the 
only side which rulers of States have to take 
account of. Personal piety, charity, and self- 
sacrifice are in truth qualities too subtle to be 
weighed in the coarse scales of the politician, 
who can only, even in Christian — how much 



30 China and Christianity* 

more in non-Christian — countries deal with 
the external manifestations of, Christian socie- 
ties as they collide and interact with the other 
elements of the body politic. It is with them 
as with the dual character of the private citizen. 
The law, or the State, deals with the several 
members of society not according to their in- 
nate worth or purity of motive, but strictly 
according to their public record ; and the man 
of exemplary life, the pious son, devoted hus- 
band, and loving father who levies ship-money 
or moves his neighbour's landmark is not 
allowed to plead in defence the fine qualities 
of his personal morality. As Christian critics 
of Mohammedanism usually brush away the 
religious emotions which give it life, so must 
politicians, as such, virtually set aside the ethe- 
real principle which animates Christianity, 
more especially politicians who are themselves 
heathen. 

The attention of an intelligent Chinese in- 
quirer would naturally be drawn to the different 
aspects which Christianity has assumed in the 
successive stages of its growth, and throughout 
the wide regions where it has taken root ; its 



Exoteric Christianity. 31 

chronological and its ethnical developments. 
The intangible abstraction, pure Christianity, 
he could only hope to deduce from many and 
various data y as the ideal focus of some great 
ellipse may be inferred from observations at 
different points of its circumference. Every- 
where he would see the characteristic products 
of the human nature of the people compounded 
with the forms of the religion which they have 
severally adopted. Of extant Christianity the 
mere geographical distribution will perhaps 
suggest as much as is necessary respecting the 
main features of these compounds, without elab- 
orate description. Its manifestations in North- 
ern and Southern Europe and America, in 
Russia, Switzerland, and Abyssinia may serve 
as types of generic varieties ; while that colos- 
sal compendium, the Church of Rome, contains 
within itself almost every colour which the 
many-coloured mind of man has imparted to 
his religion. 

The observer of this vast panorama spread 
out over the Western world is naturally 
prompted to compare these diverse forms, and 
to deduce, if it be possible, from the visible 



32 China and Christianity* 

results the causes of their differentiation, as 
well as the secret of their harmony, so far as 
harmony may be discoverable. The complex 
influence of climate, soil, and worldly circum- 
stances, modes of life, of race, of education, of 
political history, of communications, of epochs, 
of the personality of apostles, of authority, of 
wars, of hardships, of luxury ; in a word of 
the myriad formative agencies which combine 
to build up the character of humanity — might 
suggest to one who came fresh to the subject 
the attempt to render some rational account of 
the varied development of popular Christian- 
ity, and to unravel the double mystery of its 
catholicity and its narrowness. For him, how- 
ever, who is only in quest of such light as will 
guide him in the despatch of business within 
his own province, such an exhaustive investi- 
gation, probably impossible even for a Buckle, 
would be quite out of place. He will have to . 
content himself with bold and rapid generaliza- 
tions, fortunate if these may perchance help 
him to forecast in some vague manner the 
character which the religion of Christ might be 
expected to assume, when transplanted to the 



Exoteric Chris tianity* 33 

soil of China. For that is the real point on 
which the interest of the inquest converges. 

Inasmuch, however, as contemporary Chris- 
tian nations are so far removed in race, tradi- 
tions, and civilization from the actual con- 
dition of the Chinese State, the comparative 
study of these co-existing societies would yield, 
at the best, results too speculative for use, and 
it would be necessary, at the very least, to sup- 
plement it by a chronological review of the 
descent of modern Christianity, through its 
many channels, from its origin. And this 
would be the simpler undertaking of the two 
in that the materials of such a review have 
already been digested by historical students 
who, if not impartial, are at least sufficiently 
distant from the events they describe to form 
a judgment clearer than it is possible for an 
ordinary man to form with respect to the tran- 
sactions of his own time. The modern world 
indeed, whether social, political, or religious, 
would be as unintelligible without some knowl- 
edge of the successive agitations which have 
produced it as words often are without their 
etymology ; and on the other hand past events 



34 China and Christianity* 

would be very imperfectly understood without 
the retrospective light thrown on them by the 
consummations to which they have in their 
different ways led up. Every stage of its prog- 
ress will reveal something of the true nature 
of Christianity, fragmentary, however, like the 
tesselae of a mosaic picture, and whosoever 
would gain an approximately just idea of it 
must take it in perspective, looking at the be- 
ginning from the end, and at the end from the 
beginning. 

From the time when the movement gathered 
its new-born forces timidly and anxiously in 
an upper room in Jerusalem to the ubiquitous 
display, courageous and confident, of our own 
day, the drama of Christianity has never 
ceased to be crowded with incidents which 
stand out and challenge investigation. Like a 
stream from the mountains cutting its way im- 
partially through all obstructions the new 
religion burst through every class and condi- 
tion of men : the remnants of the philosophers 
of Greece, the soldiers and politicians of Rome, 
Arabs on one side and Goths on the other, 
the commonest and rudest barbarians as well as 



Exoteric Christianity* 35 

the most cultured scholars, reducing them all 
to the common level of subjects of the Church; 
and all the chords of human life were agitated 
to the uttermost. 

In its passage through so many strata the 
stream was perhaps enriched rather than puri- 
fied, for the debris of the different paganisms 
which it undermined was borne on its bosom 
and distributed over the new continent of un- 
folding thought like the glacial boulders which 
are strewn over Europe, far from the rock 
bed whence they were detached. And even as 
scientists speculate as to the origin of the one 
so do metaphysicians find their ingenuity some- 
times taxed to trace the genealogy of the 
other. During its long and chequered course, 
the Church has shown itself in depression 
and in triumph, in the extremes of poverty 
and of wealth, and almost in the extremes of 
depravity and virtuous exaltation, and it has 
shown how the principles of Christianity re-act 
on many varieties of race and character and 
many phases of human life. The history of 
the Church is thus a museum of vital experi- 
ments worked out but not yet fully classified, 



36 China and Christianity* 

an open book from which no hungry mind, 
whether learned or unlearned, need turn empty 
away. 

The question then is : What leading im- 
pressions of Christianity would a moderately 
informed Chinese be likely to derive from such 
a hurried survey of the past and present as is 
above suggested, and what conception might 
he form of the probable social results of its 
inoculation into the actual life of China ? No 
man not himself in contact with the magnetic 
power of Christianity can hope to appreciate 
its value in the regeneration of individual 
character ; and it is scarcely necessary to repeat 
that the spiritual or essential element which 
has kept Christianity from breaking up is 
necessarily left out of account, the superficial 
or political aspect of it being alone here con- 
sidered. 

With these important eliminations, then, 
the salient features of Christianity most likely 
to arrest the attention of the supposed inquirer 
may be surmised to be something like the 
following : 

(1.) He would be impressed with the vital- 



Exoteric Christianity. 37 

ity of a system which has succumbed neither 
to external opposition nor to its own follies 
and crimes, though he would not fail at the 
same time to note certain significant exceptions 
to its success in the debased Christianity of 
Africa, Arabia, and Syria, which disappeared 
before the sweep of the more vigorous Islam. 
Indeed, the struggle which was carried on 
with fluctuating fortune for many centuries 
between the low types of Christianity and the 
virile creed and government of Mohammed 
would not be the least interesting portion of 
the survey, seeing that, as has happened in 
India, China will have to accommodate both 
competitors. 

(2.) The next characteristic of Christianity 
which would interest the inquirer would per- 
haps be its undeviating progressiveness, its in- 
tolerance, 1 its love of power, 2 and its tacit or 
explicit assumption of infallibility. 

1 A diplomatic Secretary of Pope Pius VII. declared that it 
was " of the essence of the Catholic religion to be intolerant." 

2 Not an ignoble desire. Ruskin says d. propos of some 
reflections of Dean Milman : " You may observe, as an almost 
unexceptional character in the ' sagacious wisdom ' of the Protes- 
tant clerical mind, that it instinctively assumes the desire of 



38 China and Christianity* 

In the infancy of the movement, when the 
Christians had as yet scarce ventured to show 
themselves out of doors, they would be seen 
assuming authority over their neighbours. 
And the spirit of governing so runs through 
the veins of the Christian body, even to the 
small capillaries, that there is hardly a village 
in Christendom but those of its inhabitants who 
appropriate to themselves in a special sense the 
name of Christian would be found in one way 
or another trying to rule their neighbours. 
Strife being so natural to man it would be 
absurd to charge Christianity with all the wars 
which have convulsed Christendom. It is 
nevertheless true that religion imparts an 
energy to quarrels, whether on the great or 
the small stage, such as commoner motives 
fail to do; and also that a large proportion of 
the great wars of Christendom have been 
avowedly religious in their origin and aim. 
Nor does dismemberment quench the spirit of 

power and place not only to be universal in Priesthood, but to 
be always purely selfish in the ground of it. The idea that power 
might possibly be desired for the sake of its benevolent use, so 
far as I remember, does not once occur in the pages of any 
ecclesiastical historian of recent date." 



Exoteric Christianity* 39 

the Church, for like the annelids which propa- 
gate by fission, each offshoot reproduces in- 
tegrally the attributes of the parent, and the 
least of them is ready to stand up before the 
world and defend, with whatever weapons 1 
happen to be available, its claim to rule by 
divine right over its neighbours. Every sect 
is thus in its nature a potential persecutor, 2 
as indeed all religions are, and the long 
struggles for "religious liberty' ' have usually 
been for liberty to control others, 3 fortunately 
tempered in its action in modern days by the 
superior efficiency of civil government. Per- 
haps after all, this is no more than to say that 
the Christian sects are full of life. 

But what a paradoxical spirit it is ! Diffi- 
dent in matters of daily experience ; puzzled 

1 " Flogging, branding, and other agreeable forms of recrim- 
ination were familiar enough as from Puritan to Quaker." — 
Saturday Review, 12th March, 1892. 

2 " Even the reformers were as furious against contumacious 
errors as they were loud in asserting the liberty of conscience. 
. . . The Puritans in turn became persecutors when they got 
the upper hand (1645)." — Justice Duncan, cited by Professor 
Schaff. 

3 " The cry for religious equality means the desire for irre- 
ligious persecution." — Ibid., 16th January, 1892. 



4o China and Christianity* 

by the commonest phenomena ; unable to 
foresee the issue of the simplest combination ; 
failing wherever their judgment can be brought 
to any practical test ; many professors of Chris- 
tianity nevertheless, in matters which eye hath 
not seen nor ear heard, " most ignorant of 
what they're most assured," assume a position 
of certainty so absolute as to warrant them in 
employing all the forces at their command to 
compel other men to their opinion. And 
whenever they find it feasible they aspire to 
attach the civil government itself to their par- 
ticular service. Governments everywhere have 
as much as they can do to guard their ma- 
chinery from being used by the sects for pur- 
poses of coercion, the instinct for which seems 
to be irrepressible. Nor indeed could it be 
logically otherwise so long as each sect believes 
from its heart that it is really entrusted with 
the oracles of God. 

It need not surprise the student that in the 
origin of Christianity no countenance was given 
to pretensions to domination, 1 while the con- 

1 " There is nothing whatever in the doings and teachings of 
our Lord which could be used to justify religious intolerance 
and persecution." — Dr. Faber. 



Exoteric Christianity ♦ 4 1 

trary principle was laid down as fundamental. 
For no system, whether of religion or philos- 
ophy, is able long to maintain its pristine 
purity. All known religions have diverged 
widely from the precepts and practices of their 
founders, Islam perhaps the least of all. The 
collective militant temper, however, is, fortu- 
nately, not inconsistent with personal kindli- 
ness, according to the law of human nature 
before alluded to under which men are willing 
to serve their corporations by means which 
they would scruple to use for their personal 
interests. Hence the frequent observation that 
certain persons are " better than their creed/' 
The rule applies also, conversely, to those 
whose moral standards belong to an inferior 
order, who seek their own advantage by means 
which they would not resort to for the com- 
mon good. 

(3.) Growing naturally out of the preceding 
conditions is the compact formation of " the 
Church" in its many varieties, whose solidarity 
gives energy, and which is the immediate 
cause of religious persecution, whether by 
Christians or of Christians. 



4-1 China and Christianity* 

It might have been supposed a priori that 
essential Christianity, the devotion of individ- 
uals to the person of Christ (to take a short 
but inadequate definition), needed no such 
formal combination of men, and that vital re- 
ligion would even be overlain to extinction by 
the pomp and circumstance, to say nothing of 
the coarser matters, inseparable from large or- 
ganizations. But as a common loyalty to 
Christ implies the brotherhood of man, of 
which the various Christian societies may be 
taken as separate nuclei, destined eventually 
to coalesce, the principle of association must be 
recognized as fundamental with them. When 
the followers of Christ began to call them- 
selves " brethren " the Church was already 
formed ; and there it stands to-day, the grain 
of seed grown into a wide-spreading tree with 
many branches, and its roots struck deep into 
the soil of humanity ; the visible embodiment 
of Christianity. 

(4.) A necessary development of the cohe- 
sive quality of the Church was its self-govern- 
ing tendency, which declared itself in its 



Exoteric Christianity* 43 

earliest days and has grown with the growth of 
Christianity. 

But a section of any national community 
separated in aims, sympathy, and organization 
from the rest must be a source of jealousy 
even to strong governments, and an occasion 
of alarm to weak ones. And even in cases 
where the weakness of government may itself 
be pleaded in justification of separate auton- 
omies, which claim to fulfil, though in an 
irregular manner, the functions of a national 
government, that is the last plea likely to be 
admitted by incapable rulers. The Roman 
Emperors looked askance at all associations not 
recognized by and subordinate to the public 
law, and the Church of Rome, though itself 
the sublimes t example ever known of an im- 
perium in imperio, has never even to the pres- 
ent day been able to extend its toleration to 
the harmless mysteries of the Freemasons. 
The Christian Church, indeed, has in all ages 
been the most indigestible morsel in the form 
of an empire within the empire that ever ex- 
isted excepting where, as in Russia, it has been 
incorporated whole into the scheme of State 



44 China and Christianity* 

government ; for to its vigour and self-asser- 
tion, and its claim to be a law to itself it added 
the supernatural sanction of hell-fire, to which 
all who opposed were unhesitatingly consigned. 
In the ages when the Christian Church was 
still more than half pagan this was a formidable 
weapon to wield against recalcitrant sovereigns. 
The secular quarrel between the religious 
and the civil power springs eternal out of the 
single claim of ecclesiastics to obey and admin- 
ister a higher law than the law of the land, a 
claim by no means restricted to popes and 
bishops. And a compact body governed by 
such a theory of its own authority must be a 
serious element in any political State, be it 
Oriental or Occidental, and it ought to be no 
matter for wonder that an Eastern government 
should treat with some reserve the introduc- 
tion into its territory of any organization em- 
bodying such principles. 

(5.) Although the tenets 1 of Christianity 
do not fall directly within the scope of po- 

1 Some of the Chinese Emperors, however, notably K'ang- 
Hsi and his persecuting son, assumed or affected a great interest 
in the doctrines of Christianity. 



Exoteric Christianity* 45 

litical consideration, yet, inasmuch as the 
species of morality which is inculcated among 
the people must be coloured to some extent by 
the doctrines which they are taught, and as the 
morality of a nation can never be a matter of 
indifference to any statesman, 1 it follows that 
even the dogmas of the Church may be by no 
means devoid of interest for him. To China 
in an especial sense would this observation 
apply, seeing that the paternal rule of the em- 
perors includes the functions of Pontiff and 
public preceptor, which are continued down- 
wards through every grade of the official hier- 
archy. From this point of view the apology 
attached to the toleration clauses in China's 
foreign treaties cannot be said to be irrevelant, 
however inadequate it may be. 

Now, on this branch of the inquiry, the 
bearing of ecclesiastical dogma, the drama of 
Christianity will speak to the student in tones 
varying greatly according to the ear with which 
he listens to them. They will often appear 
discordant, and not seldom contradictory. In 

1 " The state can never be indifferent to the morals of the 
people." — Prof. Schaff. 



46 China and Christianity* 

the manifold divisions of the Christian mass he 
will be apt to be bewildered at first, but cer- 
tain lines of cleavage will gradually reveal 
themselves. For example, he will find the 
Church in successive ages unequally divided 
between the ethical principles of Faith and 
Works, or personal and vicarious merit. On 
one side, creeds and ceremonial ; on the other, 
virtue and charity appear in the ascendant ; a 
moral antithesis sufficiently pronounced. At 
certain epochs, indeed, he may find official 
Christianity practically divorced from morals 
and wedded to the fiercer passions. Other 
planes of cleavage would bring into view other 
great opposed principles which are grounded 
in human nature and have their full develop- 
ment in the Christian Church. The Stoic 
ideal of duty, without compensation, and the 
Epicurean ideal of pleasure, be it present or 
posthumous, may be seen dividing between 
them, though unequally, the field of Christian 
ethics much as they did that of the pre-Chris- 
tian time in the West, and do now that of the 
philosophic schools of China. 1 As it has fallen 

1 "The Stoics much resemble the Confucianists of China, and 
the Epicureans are represented philosophically by a sect of 



Exoteric Christianity* 47 

to the lot cf Christendom to ransack the 
treasures of antiquity and to bring together 
from every region of the earth the things 
most worthy to be preserved, the student 
will be able to recognize in its manifesta- 
tions most of the time-worn psychological 
ingredients, rearranged, like hewn stones from 
ancient buildings fitted into modern edifices, 
but with a distinction between the old and the 
new which defies analysis ; such a difference 
as that between the placid and reflective Lake 
Leman and the impetuous Rhone, both formed 
of the same waters. If Christianity repro- 
duces the old philosophies it is with a new 
inspiration, for Reason, the balancing power, 
has yielded to Faith, the impelling power, — 
which removes mountains. Nor is its efficacy 
dependent on its formulas, since diverse forms 
are seen to be equal in energy. It is a power 
which lives through errors. It is not right- 
eousness, though to the faithful it be counted 
for righteousness. Through good report or 
bad, therefore, the secret of the world that now 

Taoists, and practically by the large majority of opulent people 
in China." — Dr. Faber. 



48 China and Christianity* 

is, and probably of that which is immediately 
to follow, rests obviously with the Christians, 
which is a lesson well worth pondering by 
political students whether in the East or the 
West. 

The direction of men's higher aspirations is 
indeed no trivial matter ; whether the goal of 
life be, on the one hand, a Heaven which the 
refined depict as a cc beatific vision," and the 
unrefined think of under more material images, 
or whether, on the other, it be duty to God 
and man, to be done even if the Heavens 
should fall. 1 Important questions, but scarce 
expressible in terms fit to serve practically for 
every day use, and at any rate outside the 
province of empirical statesmanship. 

It is a source of chronic misunderstanding 
between the Church and the World that Chris- 
tianity seems at no period to have appealed to 
political bodies by its spiritual, but by its ma- 
terial, or fighting qualities. Governments and 
peoples, as such, do not therefore come into 

1 " To be urged by the desire of heaven to the performance of 
virtue cannot bear comparison with doing good for its own sake." 
Confucian polemic. — Dr. Edkins. 



Exoteric Christianity* 49 

direct contact with those representatives of the 
religion who, following the most closely in the 
footsteps of their great Exemplar, are the most 
gentle and patient, but with the trumpet 
blowers of the force, described in the metaphor 
of a Chinese Christian as the coarse rind which 
hides the precious fruit. It is not Edward the 
Confessor, but Defenders of the Faith like 
Henry VIII. and Philip ; not Fenelon or Pas- 
cal, but Richelieu and Mazarin ; not St. 
Francis, but Hildebrand and the Medici ; not 
Thomas a Kempis, but Thomas a. Beckett; not 
Augustine, but Athanasius ; not Melanchthon 
or Erasmus, but Luther and Calvin; not 
George Wishart or George Herbert, but Knox 
and Laud ; not Pedro de la Gasca and Las 
Casas, but Pizarro and Cortez ; not Evelyn, 
but Cromwell ; not Newman or Manning, but 
Walsh and Croke ; or, to come nearer to our 
Eastern home, not Sarthou, but Anzer; not 
Crosset, but Griffith John that stand forth to 
the world as the spokesmen and sponsors for 
Christianity ; the impersonation, in short, of 
the Church militant ; the hard buttresses of 
Christianity, perhaps as necessary to its preser- 
vation as the rough shell is to the mollusc. 



50 China and Christianity* 

(6.) A deduction at once practical and ob- 
vious would be that which lies on the surface 
of every newspaper, that Christianity is the 
ruling factor in the polity of the Western na- 
tions, and exercises a controlling influence on 
all governments. A religious question would 
be seen to constitute a chronic obstacle to the 
assimilation of British rule in Ireland ; the 
Church would be seen to hold the balance of 
power in Germany, compelling the strongest 
parties to reckon with it ; nor in France, Italy, 
and Spain is there any political force of equal 
energy. The happy circumstances of the 
United States, which profit by the long experi- 
ence of old Europe without being fettered by 
its traditions, enable that government to main- 
tain perfect equilibrium among all divisions of 
Christianity, and enable the Churches to elim- 
inate the grosser political elements from their 
religious life ; while among no people is the 
religious principle properly so called more 
efficient as a social 1 force. Were it ever pos- 
sible for one nation to copy another, there is 

1 " Christianity is the most powerful factor in our society." — 

Prof. S CHAFF. 



Exoteric Christianity* 51 

perhaps no model which China would be safer 
in following than the United States in her 
dealing with Christian organization ; but the 
peculiar difficulties of China, which are non- 
existent in the Western Republic, render the 
American example unavailing, except so far as 
it may furnish the idea of religious toleration 
on a sympathetic basis. 

(7.) Perhaps the section of Christian history 
which would come home most directly to a 
Chinese politician — as it has in fact done — 
would be the evolution of the protectorate of 
the Christian inhabitants of non-Christian coun- 
tries, against the civil government, by the forces 
of Christian states. The necessity for repell- 
ing Mohammedan invasion drove Christianity 
into forming political and military leagues ; and 
among the lasting results of the protracted 
struggle for life between the two religions, the 
assumed right of Christian States to interpose 
between the Ottoman Government and its 
Christian subjects, an assumption extended in 
principle to all non-Christian countries, is one 
which possesses for China a very practical sig- 
nificance. 



52 China and Christianity* 

A Chinese who had the desire to follow up 
the study of the natural history of Christi- 
anity would find a wealth of inviting material 
all round him in the libraries of the West. 
But he might thus become familiar with the 
great landmarks without discovering the fruit- 
ful lands which lie between them — if the 
metaphor may be stretched so far — for the 
striking incidents of its outward career bear 
much the same relation to essential Christianity 
as the wars of a nation do to the common life 
of the people. And as the secrets of nature 
elude scientific research, so will the vital prin- 
ciple of Christianity elude the scrutiny of any 
objective critic. 1 The mere political observer, 

1 " The real history is underneath all this. The wandering 
armies are, in the heart of them, only living hail, and thunder, 
and fire along the ground. But the Suffering Life, the rooted 
heart of native humanity, growing up in eternal gentleness, how- 
ever wasted, forgotten, or spoiled, itself neither washing, nor 
wandering, nor slaying, but unconquerable by grief or death 
became the seed ground of all love, that was to be born in due 
time; giving, then, to mortality, what hope, joy, or genius it 
could receive ; and — if there be immortality — rendering out of 
the grave to the Church her fostering Saints, and to Heaven her 
helpful angels. Of this low-nestling, speechless, harmless, infi- 
nitely submissive, infinitely serviceable order of being, no His- 
torian ever takes the smallest notice, except when it is robbed, 
or slain." — Ruskin. 



Exoteric Christianity . S3 

however, would be short-sighted who failed to 
take account of the moral achievements of 
Christianity in disciplining the lower and culti- 
vating the higher tendencies of humanity, for 
without attempting any hypothetical recon- 
struction of the world as it might have been 
without Christianity, the myriad meliorating 
agencies which draw their life blood from its 
exhaustless stream are patent to common view. 
The alleviation of distress, the raising of the 
dejected, the purification of domestic life, the 
humanizing of man and the ennobling of 
woman appeal to all open minds, and the 
chief credit of these things it would not be 
easy to deny to Christianity. It would never- 
theless be an error, as before said, to suppose 
that a non-Christian Oriental would be im- 
pressed by them in the same way as a Christian 
is, for wide as may be their divergences in 
practice the theories of morals in East and 
West are not so disparate but that such ob- 
served virtues of the West as approved them- 
selves to an Oriental he would be inclined to 
refer to the teachings of his own sages. 



54 China and Christianity. 



V. 



CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 

Our supposititious inquirer would naturally 
be prompted as he went along to apply the 
results of his observations of the West to the 
circumstances of the Christian movement in 
China. Nor could any exercise be more prac- 
tical. For China is by no means inexperienced 
in Western religions, and is not altogether de- 
pendent on the knowledge of them derived 
from abroad. She has indeed the unique 
advantage of being able to judge them by the 
comparative method, for besides having found 
accommodation for the two incongruous for- 
eign systems, Buddhism and Mohammedanism, 
she is still struggling with the recrudescence of 
Christianity, which had originally gained access 
to the empire by the Western frontiers in the 
seventh century, during the T c ang dynasty. 
It is a fact which should interest students of 
comparative religion, as well as propagandists, 



Christianity in China. 55 

that the Nestorian Christianity introduced at 
that early period into China, and received with 
favour, was, according to the Chinese view, grad- 
ually superseded by Mohammedanism, even 
as the corrupt Churches in the West had been, 
but apparently without violence, Islam holding 
its ground to the present day. The Christian 
missions in Asia would be an attractive study, 
were it only for the heroism with which their 
record is enriched. Two features common to 
all these efforts — whether in India, Persia, 
Tibet, among the Khanates of Central Asia, or 
in China — seem deserving of special note. 
First, that the Christian missionaries were 
nearly always welcomed and protected by the 
rulers of the various states, by those even who 
were already devoted to other religions. And 
secondly, the missions, prosperous at the outset, 
experienced violent reactions, as if their after- 
taste was found bitter. It would be easy to 
give local and partial explanations of this uni- 
versal experience ; as the awakened jealousy 
of the Lamas in Tibet, the reversal of the con- 
ciliatory attitude of the first missionaries to- 
wards native customs and philosophies in 



$6 China and Christianity. 

China, dynastic revolutions, and so forth. 
But such particular reasons seem scarcely ade- 
quate to explain the entire disappearance of 
mediaeval Christianity and the subsequent 
partition of Asia between Buddhism and 
Mohammedanism. In China the Church 
fared best, for there the Nestorians were still 
vigorous enough, after six centuries, to be a 
thorn in the side of the Catholic missionaries 
who came to, and were well received at, the 
Mongol Court in the reign of that model of 
religious toleration, Kublai, who honoured 
equally the four prophets, Jesus Christ, Mo- 
hammed, Moses, and Buddha. 1 From the 
accession of the Ming dynasty, however, com- 
munication with the West being cut off, the 
traces of Christianity were so completely lost 
that there were none either to welcome or 
oppose the apostles who 250 years later made 
their way to China round the Cape of Storms, 
and discovered that it was Cathay. 

1 " In this empire there are men of all nations under the sun 
and monks of all sects ; and as every one is permitted to live in 
J whatever belief he pleases, the opinion or rather the error, being 
upheld that each one may effect his salvation in his own religion, 
we are enabled to preach in perfect liberty and security." 
Letter of Aitdri de Perotise from Kai Tong, 1326. — Hue. 



Christianity in China* 57 

The entrance of the Italian missionaries into 
the empire and the capital towards the end of 
the 1 6th century is described by the Chinese 
— and it is their version we are concerned 
with — as crafty and insidious. The mission- 
aries, indeed, gave much the same account of 
themselves, for they, by the most admirable 
perseverance under almost insuperable difficul- 
ties, contrived to enter the service of the Em- 
perors while remaining strictly under the orders 
of the Propaganda. They were from the first 
opposed by Censors and high officers, but were 
supported by the reigning Emperor of the 
Ming dynasty (Wan Li, 1573), their passport 
to the imperial favour being their astronomical 
science, which enabled them to correct the cal- 
endar, a task on which Hindu Buddhists had 
been similarly employed seven centuries before, 
and which seems still to have continued to 
baffle the Astronomical Board of Peking. 
Matteo Ricci, the first who gained entrance to 
the Capital, had already been some years in 
the Southern provinces, and there were already 
more or less prosperous missions at Nanking 
and several other places, described by the 



58 China and Christianity* 

missionaries as cc four light-houses " diffusing 
the truth over the Chinese empire. Though 
constantly denounced by Ministers and Cen- 
sors they maintained their ground in the prov- 
inces until the Emperor, at last yielding to 
the official pressure, issued an order for them 
to withdraw, which the missionaries were very 
dilatory in obeying, and for a time they suffered 
grievously in the provinces. In the mean- 
while the religion had been spreading rapidly 
throughout the empire, and counted among 
its adherents men of rank and learning. 
/Adam Schaal, who had succeeded Matteo Ricci 
in Peking as mathematician in the last years 
of the Ming, and was impressed into taking 
part in the military operations which ended in 
its overthrow, was prompt to pay his court to 
the Emperor Shun-Chih, the first of the Ta 
Ts c ing dynasty, and he and his comrade Ver- 
biest were by that monarch appointed Presi- 
dent and Vice-president of the Astronomical 
Board; 

The position of these missionaries and their 
followers was incessantly attacked by Chinese 
officials, but during the long reign of K'ang 



Christianity in China. 59 

Hsi ( 1 662-1723) they were still upheld by the 
Emperor, who highly valued their scientific 
services. But the opening of churches in the 
provinces had been definitely forbidden about 
1670, though the missionaries in the imperial 
service were still allowed to hold religious 
worship in the capital, but for themselves alone, 
the propaganda being interdicted* Both re- 
strictions were, however, evaded, the imperial 
edicts fell into desuetude, and the propaganda 
continued active in the Southern provinces. 
The official pressure on the Emperor was 
strenuously renewed, and in the 56th year of 
his reign (17 17) he was at last prevailed on to 
revive the lapsed edict of 1670 and decree 
the expulsion of all the foreigners, within six 
months, due precautions being taken, however, 
to protect them on their long journeys from 
the districts in which they had settled to the 
port of embarkation. Six years later the expul- 
sion had still not been effected, and the Vice- 
roy of Canton, Kung, then memorialized the 
successor of K c ang Hsi near the beginning of 
1725 to the effect that the numbers of the 
foreigners were too great to be disposed of in 



60 China and Christianity* 

such a summary fashion, for the wharf at Macao 
was too narrow and the available ships too few ! 
He therefore petitioned that they should have 
leave to reside in Canton in their own estab- 
lishment, but not to teach their doctrines ; 
and that the Chinese who had joined that sect 
should be made to abandon it. The year after, 
the same viceroy memorialized the Throne that 
foreigners had been resident in Macao for 200 
years, that their numbers had increased to 
over 3,000, and he prayed His Majesty Yung- 
cheng to issue an edict limiting the numbers 
and ordering that the supernumeraries should 
be made to leave the country, — to which the 
Emperor assented. 

(Nevertheless, during the reign of K'ien- 
Lung (173 6-1 796) the missionaries continued 
their proselytizing efforts in the northern and 
western provinces, though from the central 
provinces of Hunan, Hupei, and Kiangsi they 
had been hunted out and expelled. The Em- 
peror was constrained to issue a forcible edict 
ordering the searching out and prohibiting of 
the sect, but always, like his predecessors, in- 
clined to clemency, K'ien Lung in the fiftieth 



Christianity in China* 61 

year of his age (1785) issued another edict 
formally and in set terms confirming the pre- 
vious one, which had again been secretly vio- 
lated by the " preaching criminals, whose only 
purpose was to propagate their doctrines, and 
in no other way did they offend against the 
law." Yet as they were ignorant of the law 
of the empire he had pity on their sufferings 
in prison, and would set them at liberty and 
allow them to live in their own establishment 
in the capital/ 

Attempts were made in 1794 by Lord Ma- 
cartney, who was well received by K c ien Lung, 
and again in 1 8 1 6 by Lord Amherst, who was 
not received by Kia K c ing because he refused 
the k Q ou-fou which he pretended was due to 
the "Lord of Heaven " alone, to obtain more 
favourable consideration for foreigners. " From 
that time," says the narrative we have been 
following, " began the dissatisfaction." 

The Christians continued to violate the law, 
evangelists went out secretly into every prov- 
ince, and evil people under cover of their name 
accomplished their evil purposes. The risings 
during the Ming, and in the reigns of K'ien- 



62 China and Christianity ♦ 

Lung, and Kia-K c ing of the present , dynasty 
are set down to the White Lily and other cor- 
rupt sects, which are generally associated in 
the public mind with the Christians. 

(Then, to crown all, the English forced them- 
selves into China, bringing their "Jesus books," 
scattering them among the people, who have 
ever since been carrying on their wickedness 
under this cover. The English treaty of Nan- 
king in 1842 was followed by a French treaty 
in 1844, which conceded protection to mis- 
sionaries and other foreigners at the open ports, 
but did not annul the prohibition against for- 
eigners teaching in the interior ; and when the 
French came a second time in 1 846 to Canton 
and urged the removal of the proscription, the 
Emperor Tao-Kwang decreed that at the ports 
they might erect Churches and the natives 
might there receive instruction, " but they were 
not to beguile women into vile practices nor 
by deceit take out the eyes of sick persons." 

After another war the treaties extorted from 
China in 1858-60 granted a more general pro- 
tection to evangelists and their converts in the 
interior of the country, and provided more- 



Christianity in China* 63 

over for the restitution to the French Minister 
of all the buildings and lands, the property of 
the missions, which had been confiscated dur- 
ing the persecutions. After these treaties, the 
Chinese followers of the missionaries, trusting 
in the foreigners for protection, insulted the 
soldiers and people, and disregarded the offi- 
cials, which provoked a decree from the Em- 
peror, in which he says : " It appears from the 
statement in the French treaty that the sect 
exhort men to righteousness ; this has already 
been published abroad. Now, recently in every 
province the followers of this sect and their 
opponents are constantly quarrelling and fight- 
ing. Hereafter let the local magistrates in 
every province diligently examine into the 
origin of these troubles and use authority to 
preserve the peace. If the Christians can quiet 
their own, let them as a body be fully pro- 
tected. But if any, relying upon his sect, does 
evil and violates the law, then the magistrates 
shall certainly, according to law, try and punish 
his crime.") 

(This cursory view of the advent of Christi- 
anity into China is taken from a recent collec- 



64 China and Christianity* 

tion of carefully edited Chinese State papers 
called King-sz-wen, sometimes known as the 
" Blue Books " a section of which, translated 
by Rev. D. L. Anderson, appears in the Chi- 
nese Recorder, 1891. It presents the foreign 
religion as seen with Chinese eyes, and consid- 
ering the hostile feeling of the editor, the lan- 
guage of this historical section is singularly 
moderate in tone, though other parts of the 
compilation contain grossly offensive matter.) 
As a narrative of the progress of Christian 
missions it is bald, and defective even in histor- 
ical symmetry. The famous quarrels between 
the different orders of missionaries, which on 
their own showing were more ruinous to their 
cause than the hostility of the Chinese, their 
reference of their disputes on abstruse theologi- 
cal questions to the Emperor, and their ap- 
peals to Rome on matters concerning Chinese 
customs and doctrines, which are made much 
of by foreign critics, are passed over in silence 
by this official Chinese editor, although they 
would apparently have furnished material use- 
ful for his argument. And as a matter of 
course the heroism of the Chinese as well as 



Christianity in China. 65 

foreign martyrs to the faith, the reports of 
which drew from Pius VII. the exclamation: 
"It is like a passage from the annals of the 
primitive Church ! " is entirely ignored in 
these publications. Necessarily, also, the hid- 
den source of the Christians' fortitude and the 
motive energy of their action were blank mys- 
teries to those whose sympathies were with the 
persecutors, and not with their victims. Nei- 
ther have the devoted and disinterested lives 
of the early missionaries such as Ricci and 
Verbiest, which have drawn tributes of the 
warmest admiration from candid Protestant 
writers, made any noticeable impression on the 
Chinese official world. That side of the ques- 
tion, however, has received such full attention 
from the missionary writers themselves, almost 
to the entire exclusion of the Chinese official 
and popular view of their case, that it would be 
superfluous to reproduce here any portions of 
their vivid descriptions. It is the pure Chi- 
nese view of the mission question, with all its 
defects and partialities, with which we are now 
particularly concerned. 
/The opposition to the entrance of Christian- 



66 China and Christianity* 

ity is, by the above narrative, shown to have 
been unwavering on the part of responsible 
officials, who laboriously reasoned against it as 
they also have never ceased to do against 
Buddhism, on general as well as on doctrinal 
grounds. \ To such attacks the missionaries 
laid themselves open, more, perhaps, than was 
absolutely necessary, for as if the Christian 
dogmas proper did not present a large enough 
mark for assailants, they cumbered their ship, as 
the Buddhists had done theirs, with a deck- 
load of perishable ^cosmogony, from which the 
Church has never been able quite to disentan- 
gle itself. \The scholars and officials dwelt 
forcibly also on the political danger of Chris- 
tianity. But a succession of emperors of gen- 
tle disposition who, suspecting no evil, treated 
them in a hospitable manner, allowed the mis- 
sionaries to gain a footing in the Palace under 
the cover of teaching science, while all the 
time " these foreigners had their minds fixed 
on other unlawful things." ) And referring to 
the reparation insisted on by France in 1858 
for the death of Father Chapdelaine, the re- 
porter says : " From that time the disciples of 



Christianity in China* 67 

the missionaries, though Chinese, have be- 
come very bold, openly relying upon the 
foreign Consuls to protect them, at the same 
time looking with ^contempt upon their own 
officials." 1 He also attributes various ris- 
ings in the country in former times to the in- 
fluence of divers sects, and says : " All these 
troubles came about through the instrumen- 
tality of unemployed evil men among our 
people. These made use of those worship- 
ping assemblies to collect money, and a 
crowd having gathered, they plotted rebellion. 
... So from the days of Kai-K c ing to the 
present, seditious plottings have been carried 
out in every province. . . . Thus in all the 
provinces there was no seditious sect that 
did not pretend themselves to be a worship- 
ping body." 

These prohibitions of the teaching of Chris- 

1 " The native priests are said to be quite overbearing in 
claiming access to the mandarins. Nor has this been entirely 
confined to the Roman Catholics, but native preachers con- 
nected with Protestant Missions are also charged with demand- 
ing admission into the presence of the local officials and 
presuming on their connection with foreigners to claim civil privi- 
leges." — Rev. R. H. Graves, Recorder. 1884. See also Rev. 
J. Ross, in Recorder, August, 1892. 



68 China and Christianity* 

tianity, were extorted from the Emperors, evi- 
dently against their better feeling, and, if one or 
two short and sharp persecutions prompted by 
personal pique be excepted, required nearly 
ioo years to get promulgated and 60 years 
more to be put in full force, so deliberate are 
the movements of the Chinese governing ma- 
chine. They were partially rescinded by the 
Treaties of 1842-4, and finally by those of 
1858, both of which were imposed on China 
by force of arms. But a military conqueror 
has no power over opinion, and it is certain 
that the spirit which dictated the continuous 
remonstrances of the high officials of the em- 
pire for two hundred years was in no way 
changed because a Minister, trembling for his 
head, signed the parchment placed before him 
by the plenipotentiary of a victorious invader. 
Neither was the feeling against Christianity 
likely to be soothed because the propaganda, 
against which they had waged unceasing war, was 
forced thus suddenly upon the Chinese. These 
circumstances render it dangerous for foreign 
powers to permit the slightest relaxation of 
treaty observance on the part of the Chinese. 



Christianity in China* 69 

But it would be unwise at the same time not 
to take account of the actual predicament in 
which their treaty obligations have placed that 
people. 



70 China and Christianity* 

VI. 

THE SOURCES OF CHINESE OPPOSITION. 

It were much to the purpose to extract, if 
possible, from the record of the various 
Chinese persecutions the special features in 
Christianity which render it so obnoxious to 
the Chinese, but such an inquiry is somewhat 
hindered by the reticence of both sides. The 
missionaries' reports have been edited as yet 
only in fragments, and their case has to be 
largely inferred from the course of events. 
And as to the Chinese, it is never safe to 
accept too literally their statements because of 
their constitutional habit of avoiding on all 
questions a direct issue, and of economizing 
truth by putting forward frivolous and irrele- 
vant arguments rather than meet a case squarely 
on its merits. The construction of the Chinese 
mental apparatus, or the result of their social 
education, seems to bar the direct ingress and 
egress of thought, which consequently has to 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 71 

be filtered through a labyrinth of convolutions 
which arrest the solid particles and allow only 
the more volatile a free passage. The real 
conviction of a Chinese is scarcely to be 
fathomed by his own brother, from whom 
something is always held back, and is to be 
ascertained by acts and inferences rather than 
by direct affirmation, even on solemn occasions. 
The obiter dicta of Chinese statesmen would, 
if they could be gathered up and compared, be 
a safer key to the secrets of their mind than 
the more conscious mintage of their brain. 
Unless this canon of interpretation be applied 
to Chinese public documents, serious errors 
will be unavoidable. 

From the favour with which, notwithstand- 
ing fierce academical and religious opposition 
sustained through many centuries, Buddhism 
was received by the government, the hospital- 
ity accorded to the Nestorians and other West- 
ern sects, and the tolerance subsequently ex- 
tended to the Mohammedans, it may be 
inferred that the particular species of antagon- 
ism which has been evoked by modern Chris- 
tianity was not felt towards those earlier 



72 China and Christianity. 

religious importations. Buddhism no doubt 
captivated the popular mind in China and 
Japan by supplying the great void left by the 
teachings of the sages — the promise of a future 
life, and a scheme of retribution ; paradise, and 
remission of sins. The entrance of Moham- 
medanism may have been made easy by the 
purity of its deism and simplicity of ritual 
offering few points of attack. Nevertheless 
these two religions were not less subversive of 
the indigenous theocracy of China and her 
traditional superstitions than is Christianity 
itself, and their comparative immunity from 
persecution therefore goes towards establishing 
the fact that neither a new religion, as such, 
nor its foreign origin, would be sufficient of 
itself to arouse the antagonism with which, in 
modern times, Christian doctrine has been met 
in China. The question is thus narrowed 
down to such special characteristics or external 
circumstances as may differentiate Christianity 
from those other religious systems, and perhaps 
modern Christianity from its older forms. 

In the memorials of censors and statesmen 
in the reigns of K'ang-Hsi and of Wan Li of 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition, 73 

the Ming dynasty, it is not difficult to trace 
the natural and inevitable jealousy of officials 
who saw strangers, however meritorious, pro- 
moted over their heads to honourable positions 
in the imperial service. The case was not 
altogether unlike that of the Hebrew captives 
at the Babylonish Court, whose elevation by 
successive Kings excited the envy of cc the 
presidents and satraps/' who, diligently seeking 
to compass the fall of the foreigners, were 
driven to confess : cc We shall not find any 
occasion against this Daniel except we find it 
against him concerning the law of his God." 
And it is worth noting here that one of the 
apologists of Buddhism in the Tang dynasty, 
Liu Tsing-yiian, in a tract translated by Mr. 
Giles, lays stress on this, that " Buddhism 
admits no envious rivalry for place or power." 
One prominent assailant came into direct 
personal conflict with the foreign missionaries, 
about a.d. 1665, who succeeded in supplant- 
ing Schaal and Verbiest for a time in the presi- 
dency of the Astronomical Board, and was in 
turn dislodged by them, disgraced and banished 
for detected errors in astronomical calculations. 



74 China and Christianity* 

From such a man, therefore, in the bitterness 
of his defeat, we might expect to hear the 
worst that could be said against the foreign mis- 
sionaries, put in the form most likely to impress 
the Emperor and the leaders of opinion. Yang 
Kwang-sien made a direct attack on their reli- 
gion. Not in the capital only, but " through- 
out the thirteen provinces " their emissaries 
had spread, and he says : " What is it they 
have in mind to accomplish ? " In the books 
which he wrote against the missionaries, assail- 
ing with admirable energy their theological 
tenets, and pointing out the social disinte- 
gration which the system would work, Yang 
uttered warnings of the sinister designs of the 
propagators of these corrupt doctrines, and 
appealed to posterity to attest the truth of his 
predictions. He called loudly for the expulsion 
of the foreigners on various technical grounds 
also : " From ancient times to the present," he 
says, " has any one every crossed our frontier 
who has not been sent in by his State to bring 
tribute ? Or did any of the subject States' 
Ambassadors ever come with tribute who not 
only did not return to his own country him- 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition. 75 

self, but also called hither fellows of his own 
sort to assist in corrupting our people ? " But 
his chief argument was based on the disasters 
which Christianity was sure to bring upon the 
State : cc After a while, when trouble comes, 
will these converts contend against their fathers 
and brothers, or will they help them ? . . . 
According to my humble judgment it is 
better that we should be without a good 
calendar than that we should have foreign- 
ers among us. ... I fear that if we have 
foreigners among us they will, by scatter- 
ing their gold, gather up the hearts of the 
people of our empire like as if one should carry 
fire into a pile of straw fuel, and misfortune 
will come speedily." In a word, the effect of 
the doctrine, according to Yang, was to sub- 
vert the relation of father and son, prince and 
people, or, as certain earlier conservatives in 
another part of the world expressed it, to " turn 
the world upside down." Conscious that his 
attacks would be set down to interested motives, 
he declared he would gladly be misconstrued 
by his contemporaries if only he could escape 
being honoured by posterity as a true prophet 



J 6 China and Christianity* 

of China's distress. From the prominence 
given to his anti-Christian writings after a lapse 
of 200 years, it would appear that posterity 
really gives Yang the credit which he professed 
himself so anxious to avoid. 

(The course of the anti-Christian agitation in 
China has been a consistent and unbroken one, 
gathering strength as the religion, or its pro- 
fessors, became better known, and reaching its 
culmination in our own day — though re- 
pressed in overt action — under the double 
stimulus of the spread of the sects, and of the 
foreign treaties which protect them. ) From first 
to last, with perhaps one exception, the Em- 
perors have been more liberal or less appre- 
hensive of danger than their Ministers, and 
seemed always well pleased to command the 
skilled service of the missionaries on easy 
terms. /The opposition, although fed from 
divers sources, such as personal jealousy, phil- 
osophical antipathy and religious sentiment, 
seems to have centred itself on two principal 
points : the dread of the political usurpation 
and the popular aversion. For it was natural 
that the people should feel at least a prelim- 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 77 

inary repugnance to a sect which contravened 
old customs, which kept aloof from local cele- 
brations, which held quasi-secret meetings, and 
aroused distrust by the alleged practice of arts 
incomprehensible to the common people, and 
associated with witchcraft even by the educated 
classes. 

The opposition of religionists as such, e.g., 
the Buddhist or Taoist sects, seems never to 
have been very formidable ; and the implied 
subversion of the root religion of the State — 
the worship of the True God by the Emperor 
— failed even to arouse the anger of the em- 
perors themselves, the parties it might be sup- 
posed most directly concerned in the mainte- 
nance of the theocratic status. 

Williams quotes, and paraphrases, the prin- 
cipal causes of trouble between the converts 
and their countrymen, as recorded by Mon- 
seigneur Saint-Martin, who was Vicar- Apostolic 
of Sechuan from 1772 to 1784: — 

First. Christians are frequently confounded 
with the members of the Triad Society, or of 
the White Lily sect, both by their enemies 



78 China and Christianity* 

and by persons belonging to those associa- 
tions. 

Second. The Christians refuse to contrib- 
ute to the erection or repair of temples, etc. 

Third. Betrothals are almost indissoluble 
in China ; and whenever the Christians refuse 
to ratify them by proceeding to a marriage 
already commenced, they are regarded as law- 
breakers and treated as such. 

Fourth. All communications with Euro- 
peans being interdicted, the magistrates seek 
diligently for every evidence of their existence 
in the country, by searching for the objects 
used in worship, as crosses, breviaries, etc. 

Fifth. The little respect the converts have 
for their ancestors. 

Sixth. The Converts are obliged to take 
down the ancestral tablets in order to put up 
those of their own religion, and they are seldom 
forgiven for this. 

Seventh. The indiscreet zeal of neophytes 
in breaking the idols or insulting the objects 
of public worship, is one of the commonest 
causes of persecution. 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 79 

Eighth. Disputes between the missionaries 
themselves. 

It is possible that the most constant source 
of opposition to the Christian propaganda is 
one that is never explicitly referred to in speech 
or writing, the apprehension of loss of influ- 
ence by the whole lettered and official classes. 
In the patriarchal and theocratic system under 
which the empire is administered, the magis- 
trates of all ranks in their official capacity, and 
the scholars as amateurs, not only rule but 
aspire to regulate the people in their various 
concerns, and as they must know by instinct 
that the success of the propaganda would in- 
volve the solution of their traditional tenure 
of influence, their implacable hostility to Chris- 
tianity may be inferred without reference to its 
merits as a religion. And when to this provo- 
cation is added the deposition of the whole 
classical lore of China to a subordinate place — 
which is one of the commonest of the Chris- 
tian demands — the exasperation of the classes 
which live in that literature needs no further 
explanation. A parallel might be imagined if 



80 China and Christianity. 

a foreign propaganda in Great Britain were to 
insist, as a preliminary step, on the dethrone- 
ment of the Bible and Shakespeare from their 
supreme position as English classics. It is 
right to say, however, that many, perhaps most, 
of the modern missionaries are finding an hon- 
ourable place in their school curricula for the 
reading of Confucian classics. 1 

Many of the expressions of the popular 
feeling against Christianity in China resemble 
those which were current in the regions where 
the religion first spread. The affronts offered 
to the national gods, abstention from public 
ceremonies, the scandals of promiscuous meet- 
ings, the resort to magical arts, the scooping 
out of eyes, and other abominations read like 
charges copied by the Chinese from the West- 
ern pagans, their similarity going some way 

1 "The fundamental truth of Confucianism, that man should 
strive to live in harmony with the will of Heaven, lies at the 
basis of all true religion." — Rev. F. L. Hawks Pott, Chinese 
Recorder, July, 1892. 

" I have found the classics of incomparable value, both in 
convicting of sin, in the inculcation of duty, in upsetting idolatry, 
and in establishing our Christian ideas regarding the omnipres- 
ence, the almighty power, and the universal care of the one 
living God." — Rev. J. Ross, Chinese Recorder, August, 1892. 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 81 

towards corroborating the bona fides of both. 
Beliefs and sentiments, however irrational, which 
thus well up spontaneously at such distant 
periods of time and among peoples so unknown 
to each other, are evidently too firmly planted 
in human nature to be eradicated either by 
argument or rougher measures. To the pres- 
ent day there are communities in Europe who 
believe in abominations being practised by 
Jews on Christian children, and the cruelties 
to which that persecuted race have been sub- 
jected in every country where they have settled 
constitute a standing proof of the endurance of 
racial and religious prejudice. Gradually, under 
the solvent influences of time and enlighten- 
ment, such notions will doubtless die the slow 
death of superstitions, but the strong hand 
indiscreetly applied to them is apt to harden 
prejudices which will yield only to invincible 
forbearance. 1 

1 Of course the true root of the aversion lies deeper than all 
that. Dr. Faber points at it {Messenger, July, 1892): "The 
Chinese have learned from the Roman Catholics and from their 
hundred years of struggle against Christianity to fully realize 
that the propagation of this religion concerns nothing short of 
the very existence of the Chinese peculiar theory of life in its en- 



82 China and Christianity. 

The practical statesman, on either side, will 
therefore most profitably concentrate his atten- 
tion on the one point of the assumption of 
political power — whether intended or not 
intended — by the teachers and converts to 
Christianity, which is the most obvious source 
of anxiety to the Chinese government. 1 

There is not, of course, an individual mis- 
sionary, nor any one of the sects into which the 
force is divided, who would not warmly repu- 
diate anyMesign of interference with the inter- 
nal administration, and in most cases with the 
purest sincerity. But protestations have, un- 
fortunately, no influence whatever on the 
course of events, for it is not by the malice 
prepense of individuals that dangers to the 
State are set up, but by the natural evolution of 

tirety" Perhaps the word " theory " even puts too formal a 
limitation on the Chinese feeling, for something more vital and 
more diffusive than a mere " theory of life " seems required to 
account for such infinite variety and intensity of expression, and 
to prompt such spontaneous action, where the propagation of 
Christianity is concerned. 

1 " As far as religion is concerned the Chinese are not only 
reasonable, but extremely tolerant, till the professed religion as- 
sume, or is believed to assume, a political aspect." — Rev. J. 
Ross, Chinese Recorder, August, 1892. 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 83 

their principles. Not that in this connection 
individuals are always free from blame, for 
many could be named who really have arro- 
gated authority, given themselves official rank, 
or who have at least exacted the deference and 
assumed the state belonging to such rank, 1 
who have in some cases even levied military 
forces, — to be used in aid of law and order, 
be it admitted, — and some who have dabbled 
in palace intrigues of a worldly character. And 
although hundreds more could be pointed out 
who bear themselves with perfect humility 
among their neighbours, their influence, within 
the purview of state government, is almost un- 
appreciable. It has been a long standing 

1 The often quoted observation of Father Ripa, quoted because 
of its obvious candour, is to the following effect : 

" If our European missionaries in China would conduct them- 
selves with less ostentation and accommodate their manners to 
persons of all ranks and conditions, the number of converts 
would be immensely increased, for the Chinese possess excellent 
natural abilities, and are both prudent and docile. But they have 
adopted the lofty and pompous mannei known in China by the 
appellation of ' Ti : mien.' Their garments are made of the 
richest materials ; they go nowhere on foot, but always in sedans, 
on horseback, or in boats, and with numerous attendants follow- 
ing them. With a few honourable exceptions, all the mission- 
aries live in this manner." 



84 China and Christianity. 

grievance of the government that the foreign 
priest trains his flock to look to him for protec- 
tion instead of to the constituted authorities. 

The simple fact of any considerable number 
of the inhabitants separating themselves from 
the general population must be a source of un- 
easiness to rulers, and the whole stream of offi- 
cial records proves that the secret sects are the 
chronic bugbear of the government of China. 
Christianity is not only reckoned as one of the 
sects, but it is the most difficult to manage be- 
cause the autonomy to which it tacitly aspires 
is always, in these days, liable to be backed by 
foreign force. Hence the terror with which 
some, and the aversion with which others, of 
the local officials regard communities of Chris- 
tians. 

-In Protestant journals the question is some- 
times discussed whether, and how far, it is judi- 
cious for the foreign missionaries to plead the 
cause of their converts before local magistrates 
in cases where the secular interests of the 
Christians are involved ; and it is assumed that 
the native converts sometimes abuse the advan- 
tage they derive from the support of their for- 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 85 

eign pastors with " the Consul " behind them, 
to claim N privileges which on their merits as 
mere Chinese they would not dare to do. 1 
Whatever conclusion may be eventually ar- 
rived at in these literary discussions, the fact of 
the subject being so treated at all goes far to 
justify the whole contention of the Govern- 
ment. *In many parts of the country clan 
fights are provoked by the Christians presum- 
ing on their missionary protection .N The very 
latest persecution, that in Pakow, in Mongo- 



1 " A missionary receives a report from one of his Church 
members that his heathen neighbour is persecuting him. He ap- 
plies to the mandarin, who refuses to see him. Then he goes to 
his Consul. His Consul reluctantly refers it to the higher Chi- 
nese authorities. They send down a wen shu ordering the local 
mandarin to stop persecution. The native convert has never ap- 
pealed on his own account to the mandarin. On examination it 
may or may not turn out a bogus concern altogether. Ten to 
one it is an insignificant affair. . . . But the remoter con- 
sequences are not insignificant. The Christian has been taught 
to lean upon a protection he is not entitled to ; the heathen feels 
that he is being tyrannised over by the hated foreigner, who, ac- 
cording to his notions, has no business to be in the country. The 
mandarin has been snubbed for no fault of his own ; the higher 
officials feel that in admitting the missionary they pulled down a 
house over their heads, and the Consul wishes the missionary 
and his peddling concerns far enough." — Rev. G. T. Candlin, 
in Manchester Guardian, 21st December, 1891. 



86 China and Christianity* 

lia, in November last, was but the eruption of 
one of those smouldering feuds. The Chris- 
tians there being numerous and compact had in- 
curred the enmity of their heathen neighbours, 
particularly of the c Fsai-li, or Abstinence Sect, 
to whom, it is said, they gave much provoca- 
tion. In law suits, the magistrate, intimidated 
by the presence of the foreign priest, and ap- 
prehensive of censure from Peking if he should 
furnish any pretext to the foreigner to appeal 
to his Minister, favoured the Christian liti- 
gants so openly as to excite mutiny in the 
neighbourhood, which resulted in a massacre 
of the Christians. If the records of the em- 
pire were fully searched, such cases, though 
not all so grave, would probably be found 
common enough to account for a general re- 
sentment against a perennial source of trouble 
and personal risk to the officials throughout 
the country. 

Such military exploits as those of Mon- 
seigneur Faure in Kueichow, and Monseigneur 
Delaplace in Chekiang, although serving the 
cause of the government in a crisis that threat- 
ened danger to its existence, could not but open 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition. 87 

the eyes of Chinese statesmen to possibil- 
ities of a different kind. These two prelates 
were loyal men, of whom one died in Kwei-fu 
in 1 871, and the other lived to enjoy the con- 
fidence of the Chinese government as Vicar- 
Apostolic in Peking. But who would stand 
sponsor for their successors, who in some simi- 
lar emergency might wield similar power, but 
employ it to a different end ? Indeed, certain 
defiant expressions of Monseigneur Deflesche 
in Sechuan, during the troubles there about 
1870, intimated to the French Government 
that the Church in that province had confi- 
dence in its own means of self-protection. A 
nation would hardly be in a satisfactory posi- 
tion which was liable to have to treat with an 
alien in its midst at the head of troops of his 
own raising, whether in the capacity — so easily 
interchangeable — of ally or enemy. Her ex- 
perience of her Mohammedan subjects would 
alone render China suspicious and irritable in 
face of separate communities in either guise. 
For though in that religion itself there is 
nothing inimical to the government any more 
than there is in Christianity, yet the circum- 



88 China and Christianity* 

stance of a numerous body of co-religionists 
thrown together by their alienation from the 
people round them is a skeleton always in the 
cupboard. The nucleated body must ever be 
harder than the mass in which it is imbedded, 
as was illustrated with costly vividness in the 
two great Mohammedan rebellions in Yiiman 
and in Kashgar, which arose and were quelled 
within the present generation, after sacrifices 
which taxed the resources of the empire to the 
uttermost. 

( Her standing warfare with the sects and 
secret societies, therefore ; the many insurrec- 
tions these have raised in the past ; the devas- 
tations of Taipings, Panthays, and Dunganis, 
and the waste of life and property incidental to 
their overthrow ; would seem to justify the 
fears of China in regard to the advance of any 
foreign religion; and of ail the sects and soci- 
eties which have yet appeared Christianity is 
certainly not the one that has in general 
proved to be the most docile. If, indeed, the 
government officials were willing, or were in a 
position, to observe the gentler fruits of Chris- 
tian teaching, their political apprehensions 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 89 

might be somewhat allayed; for they would 
see in many rural villages throughout the 
country the leaven of the new faith working its 
way in the silent manner in which the eternal 
forces always do work ; and they would see, if 
they had eyes for such things, evidences of 
amelioration in the life of the people, cleanli- 
ness and kindliness spreading, intelligence 
awakened, the desire for knowledge implanted, 
reading taking the place of gambling in the 
cottages, and the conditions of existence sweet- 
ened, brightened, and elevated for many a 
poor family. Equally in Catholic and Protes- 
tant mission stations might such peaceful 
progress be witnessed, not as the result of 
either Catholic or Protestant polemics, or of 
exciting literature, but of the personal magnet- 
ism of men and women whose lives reflect the 
light of love. Unfortunately, however, but 
inevitably, the features of Christianity which 
challenge the attention of the outer world, and 
especially of rulers, do not belong to that class, 
but to those which are associated with aggres- 
siveness. It is for such phases of the religion 
alone that state regulations are required, just 



oo China and Christianity • 

as the ordinary laws of a country have the ap- 
pearance of ignoring its orderly citizens and are 
ostensibly concerned only with the minority 
who violate the social order. 

Nor is it reasonable to expect the Chinese 
government to be more Christian than the 
Christians themselves ; and whatever may be 
the intrinsic merits of the religion as expressed 
in the lives of saints and the death of martyrs, 
the most eloquent apology could not speak to 
a heathen government in such cogent language 
as the acts of the representatives of Christian 
governments with whom it has daily inter- 
course. The Chinese may be lacking in spir- 
itual perception, but they cannot be denied the 
quality of common shrewdness, which enables 
them to take a fairly correct gauge of the 
foreigners of all classes with whom they come 
in contact, and of their motives of action. 
What, then, are they to think of the sacred- 
ness of a religion of which they see foreign 
powers competing for the championship merely 
in order that they may make political capital 
out of it to vex China ; or, baser still, in order 
that they may make common merchandise of 
the Christian Church ? 



The Sources of Chinese Opposition* 91 

It seems superfluous again to repeat, that 
China has not alone, indeed scarcely at all, to 
weigh the inner character of Christianity ; but 
to contemplate the Church in alliance with 
powerful nations who, whether treating religious 
affairs as ancillary to their own ambitions, or 
being goaded by the Church to action against 
their will, in either case make her cause their 
own. China has had memorable experience of 
such, to her, ill-omened alliances. It was the 
death of a Catholic priest, whose residence in 
the interior at the time was illegal, that fur- 
nished Napoleon III. the pretext for invading 
China and sacking the Palace. It was alleged 
persecutions in Cochin-China that furnished, 
at the same convenient juncture, the pretext to 
France to take possession of that territory, and 
was the not very remote cause of the Tong- 
king war which lately cost China 60 million _ 
taels, besides the loss of the protectorate. Thus 
the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of 
foreign colonial empire, of whose aggrandize- 
ment China has had to pay the cost. 

The experience of China, so far as it has yet 
gone, therefore, is not out of keeping with the 



92. China and Christianity ♦ 

record of Christianity elsewhere. And traits 
now exhibited in China, which are found to 
correspond with those observed in remote 
times and places, may not unfairly be taken 
as practically inseparable from the only forms 
of Christianity which have been able to assert 
themselves amid the strife of nations, however 
much these characters may seem at variance 
with the principles enunciated by its Founder. 



The Taiping Rebellion* 93 



VII. 

THE TAIPING REBELLION. 

Beyond these general and more or less cal- 
culable risks connected with Christianity, China 
has had a special and perhaps unique experi- 
ence of an incalculable danger of the most seri- 
ous character, which calls for some notice here. 
The Taiping rebellion, which wasted the richest 
provinces of the empire during a space of 
fifteen years (reducing populous cities to rub- 
bish heaps and fertile lands to deserts), and 
which has been estimated by some to have re- 
duced the population one way and another by 
50 million souls, or according to Dr. Wells 
Williams, 20 millions, was the direct outcome 
of Christian teaching. Dr. Edkins calls it 
" the Christian insurrection." Few nations 
have had to endure the like, and a State that 
has recently passed through such a life-and- 
death struggle may be pardoned a little cool- 



94 China and Christianity* 

ness towards the propagation of the doctrines 
with which the movement was associated. 

[The Protestant missionaries then in China 
were elated at the outburst of the great Rebel- 
lion, not because they cherished enmity to the 
government which apparently was about to be 
overthrown, but because of the demonstrated 
success of their teaching. It was not their 
fault that the country was being desolated ; 
that was one of the incidents of warfare, and 
the imperialists were at least as ruthless as the 
rebels ; but certain sacred names were blazoned 
in the Rebel proclamations, and in their books 
and tracts. Such is fanaticism. Let Heaven 
and Earth perish, 1 so that our scheme of ver- 
bal theology may triumph. For eight years, 
and perhaps longer, the Protestant missionaries 
continued to be partisans of the Rebels, 2 and 
one of the most experienced of them, at the 

1 "Among Christians there is, we are sorry to say, too large a 
party that would rather allow heaven and earth to go to pieces 
than confess a mistake on their part." — Dr. Faber. 

2 They had also the contemporary (1856) sympathy of the 
too-soon forgotten Thomas Taylor Meadows, whose valuable 
work on China stands on the shelves of a certain circulating 
library these many years, uncut. 



The Taiping Rebellion* 95 

head-quarters of the chief, was enthusiastic 
over the orthodoxy of the junior leaders whom 
he personally cross-examined in the presence 
of, among others, the present writer, as late as 
1 86 1. The tide eventually turned, and in 
view of the decidedly polygamous proclivities 
of the Wang himself, and some rather serious 
aberrations in doctrine, the missions * gradually 
withdrew their sympathy, washed their hands 
of the new Christians — Dr. Williams calls 
them "these misguided men" — and passed 
by on the other side. 

This was very well for the foreign evangel- 
ists, but what of the Chinese government ? It 
could not blow hot and cold, but had to make 
up its mind and meet the calamity, whether in 
its quasi-orthodox character, as it appeared 
when viewed from a distance, or in its more 
heretical aspect when seen at closer quarters. 
And what of the fifty, twenty, or were it even 
but ten, millions of victims ? Their ghosts as- 
suredly would be little solaced by the news 
that after all certain flaws had been found in 

1 The Catholic missions were adverse to the rebellion con- 
sistently from first to last. 



96 China and Christianity. 

the orthodoxy of the Rebels. It was obvi- 
ously the same thing to people and govern- 
ment whether these scourges of theirs were 
sound on the Filioque, or not. 
\ In his work on " Religion in China/' third 
edition, 1884, Dr. Edkins gives an interesting 
though brief account of the genesis of the 
Taiping rebellion,, which, republished thirty 
years after the final suppression of the rising, 
may be taken as the verdict by which the 
Protestant missionaries are, on the whole, will- 
ing to abide. cc The insurrection/' he says, 
" began in strong religious impressions de- 
rived from reading the Scriptures and tracts 

published by Protestant Missionaries 

We see in this movement the effect of the dis- 
tribution of Bibles and Christian tracts 

They felt the power of Christian truth . . . 
but they were without guidance in com- 
prehending the use of the Old Testament in 
Christian times." In plainer language the 
Wang drew his inspiration from the Hexa- 
teuch, and other parts of Scripture, and with 
his Oriental aptitude for visions, convinced 
himself that he was divinely commissioned to 



The Taiping Rebellion. 97 

slay his idolatrous countrymen, and to com- 
bine in his own person the missions of Joshua 
and King David. 1 The Bible, without note 
or comment, working on a half-educated, 
brooding, and unprepared mind ! 

"The Christian insurgents in China never 
had the confidence of any part of the nation," 
says Dr. Edkins. The missionaries have 
nevertheless been much encouraged by the 
Taipings, whose conversion they deemed an 
earnest of the evangelization of China ; while 
the political aims and deplorable excesses of the 
rebels were attributed to, if not excused by, the 
absence of personal instruction by foreign mis- 
sionaries, a wholly insufficient account of the 
matter. 

To the Chinese government and people, 
however, there was no extenuating circum- 
stance in the movement, which they always 
speak of wifeh unmitigated horror. The impe- 
rial rescript on the report of the death of the 

1 " Supposing Clovis had in any degree ' searched the scrip- 
tures ' as presented to the Western world by St. Jerome, he was 
likely, as a soldier-king, to have thought more of the mission of 
Joshua and Jehu than of the patience of Christ, whose sufferings 
he thought rather of avenging than imitating." — Ruskin. 



98 China and Christianity* 

Chief said with a pathos rarely found in State 
papers : "Words cannot convey any idea of 
the misery and desolation he caused ; the meas- 
ure of his iniquity was full, and the wrath of 
both gods and men was roused against him." 

[ It is no Chimaera, therefore, that the Chinese 
dread in Christianity but a proved national 
peril, their vague intuitions of this having 
ripened suddenly into a terrible experience. 
Perhaps the gravest feature in the Taiping out- 
break, considered as an episode of Christian 
development, was that, although unforeseen, it 
was a not unnatural result of the fermentation 
of Hebrew theology and theocracy undiluted, in 
minds fretting at the hardness of the problems 
of life.\ Regarded in the light of religious 
history the great Christian insurrection was not 
more extravagant in its combination of ferocity 
with fervour than other moral hurricanes which 
have swept over mankind, though the uncon- 
scious blasphemy of its creed may perhaps put 
it in a class by itself. 

There is here no question as to the intrinsic 
merits of the Taiping insurrection, or the true 



The Taiping Rebellion, 99 

character of its head. Whether it would have 
been better in the long run for the Chinese, or 
for the human race, that the movement should 
have succeeded, or whether the leader was a hero 
or an impostor, are speculations which have an 
interest of their own, but are out of place here, 
our concern being only with the phenomena of 
the rising, and with the estimate formed of it 
by the Chinese government and people, who 
have the pre-eminent right to judge. 

The practical question is, what security have 
the Chinese against a repetition of this, or some 
other form of calamity? The depths of fanati- 
cism have not yet been sounded, nor the pos- 
sible vagaries of the human heart exhausted. 
Much the same evangelizing proceedings, 
which incited the Taiping rebels, at least so far 
as the Chinese Government can be expected to 
distinguish, are being carried on without inter- 
mission over a vastly wider field ; and the mis- 
sionaries to-day know perhaps as little of the 
ferments which they may have set up in thou- 
sands of minds, 1 as they did of the incubation 

1 " The Chinese — both converts and heathen — know the mis- 
sionary better than the missionary knows them. The fact . . . 

Lrft. 



ioo China and Christianity* 

of Taipingdom. They disseminate among 
unknown millions the most stimulating litera- 
ture ever penned, apparently without misgivings 
as to the results. 

would seem to imply a strange inability on the part of the for- 
eigner to reach that mysterious realm, the celestial mind." — 
Chinese Recorder, August, 1892. 



Anti-Christian Literature* 101 



VIII. 

ANTI-CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. 

Dr. Wells Williams devotes a paragraph 
or two of that standard repository of what is 
known about China, The Middle Kingdom, to 
the discussion of the efficacy of propagandism 
by means of the printing press. " Fifty thou- 
sand books were scattered on the coast " in cer- 
tain voyages of a semi-missionary character in 
1836 and 1837, "and more than double that 
number about Canton, Macao and their vicin- 
ity. " " No one supposed that the desire to re- 
ceive books was an index of the ability of the 
people to understand them ... if the plan 
offered a reasonable probability of effecting 
some good, it certainly could do almost no 
harm." What kind of harm might be in the 
mind of the learned author is not explained, 
the worst fate suggested in the context for the 
harmless literature itself being to " be cut up 



102 China and Christianity ♦ 

for wrapping medicine and fruit, which the 
shopman would not do with the worst of his 
own books." A generation later, one mission 
press in Shanghai was pouring out thirty 
million pages annually, an amount which was 
more than doubled by the other mission 
presses ; and Dr. Williams, in recording this 
gigantic feat, 1 adds : " The effects of this litera- 
ture upon the native mind which these agencies 
are scattering wider every year will be apparent 
in the near future." No doubt; but what are 
the fruits already apparent ? One crop ripened 
and garnered, as we have seen, was the Taiping 
rebellion. Another copious harvest is being 
now gathered in ; the notorious Hunan publi- 
cations. Vile and unmannerly though these 
be, they yet constitute a reply to the pressing 
appeal of the missionaries to the Chinese 
literati^ and it is not the challenger who has 
the choice of weapons. 2 Of all the provinces 

1 " We want quality, not quantity. . . . We have an associa- 
tion Secretary who repeats ad nauseam the word millions, and 
whose cry is perpetually for money. You never hear this cry 
from Apostles." — Rev. R. H. Cobbold, in Messenger, April, 
1892. 

2 " The famous and infamous placards of the last eighteen 



Anti-Christian Literature. 103 

Hunan is the one which has been inundated 
with what claims to be Christian literature, 
and thereby Hunan has been provoked to 
return samples of its own. Missionaries, espe- 
cially of the Protestant sects, have in generous 
emulation during fifty years been doing with 
all their might what their Founder expressly 
warned them not to do (Matt. vii. 6 *), and 
now they stand horrified at the consequences 
which he foretold as precisely as if this particu- 
lar case had been in his mind. 

It is not, perhaps, the holy things so much 
as the needlessly irritating, possibly insulting, 
and really unedifying and unintelligible things 
sometimes contained in the " Christian " litera- 

months are avowedly a counterblast of the Society's tracts. If 
the truth is to conquer the foulness of error. ... we must be 
ready to stem the issuing stream by an inflow of pure literature." 
— Hankow Religious Tract Society's Appeal. Chinese Recorder, 
March, 1892. 

1 " In pursuing the course described above [the reckless circu- 
lation of Christian literature] we have sometimes acted in direct 
opposition to the spirit if not the letter of our Saviour's com- 
mand ' Give not that which is holy, etc' . . . Our failing to fol- 
low the instructions of our Lord in this respect may perhaps 
account for the meagre and disappointing results which have fol- 
lowed the very extensive distribution of books for the last 40 or 
50 years." — Rev. Dr. Nevius, Recorder, 1884. 



104 China and Christianity* 

ture which are the most answerable for the 
filthy abuse which has been lavished on the 
missionaries and their faith. It is not of course 
to be doubted that the editing 1 and circulation 
of tracts and scriptures is carried out as effi- 
ciently as the stupendous mass of matter dealt 
with allows, 2 but until some competent and 
independent sinologue assumes the task of 
sifting the productions of the mission presses 
the world cannot know what incentives may 
have been offered unwittingly to these Chinese 
revilers. It is by no means impossible that 
even the foulest of their epithets might be 
traced to some unhappy expressions in original, 
or translated compositions by foreign mission- 
aries impatient to try their hand 3 before acquir- 

1 " Most of these books, as also the greater number of articles 
in the newspapers put in the hands of the Christians, contain in- 
digestible stones instead of bread." — Dr. Faber. But what of 
the non-Christian population of Hunan, and elsewhere ? Would 
not " stones of offence " be in their case a more descriptive 
term? 

2 The Hankow Tract Society issues one million tracts every 
year. 

3 " Perhaps nothing has been more hurtful to missionaries in 
preparing books, than haste, . . . the desire to hurry it through 
the press lest some of the readers of China should die without 



Anti-Christian Literature. 105 

ing sufficient command of that double-edged 
weapon, the Chinese language ; or of others 
carried away by an inflexible conviction that 
what is good in season and in appropriate cir- 
cumstances must be good absolutely and 
always. Dr. Chalmers, of Hongkong, once 
heard a Chinese crowd laughing at the preach- 
ing of a foreigner who was incessantly repeat- 
ing the Chinese name for God, Tien-chu. But 
his manner of pronouncing the words conveyed 
the sense of "mad pig" at every utterance of 
which the audience broke out into peals of 
laughter. Ex uno disce omnes. What could 
missionaries themselves not say on such topics 
would they testify ? The incident is truly full 
of grave suggestiveness. 1 

Let it be granted that the Christian literature 
with which Hunan has been flooded is for the 
most part wholesome and void of offence. 
The Chinese literati, however, with their strong 

seeing it t In a great majority of instances unprejudiced judges 
will be of the opinion that the world can afford to wait a little." 
— Rev. Dr. Nevius, Recorder, 1884. 

1 The bestial expressions complained of in the Hunan pam- 
phlets are stated by the latest authorities to be exactly such plays 
on words as are indicated in the text. 



106 China and Christianity* 

prejudices and their foregone conclusion, natu- 
rally select the parts most suitable for their 
controversial purposes just as the Christian 
missionaries perhaps hold up the worst of the 
Chinese tracts for execration. But could any 
thing be more untoward than the connection 
of the methods of propagandism with this ava- 
lanche of bad literature which issues continu- 
ously from Hunan ? * 

So far, however, are the zealous missionaries 
of Hankow and Wuchang from seeing the 
matter in this light that they make urgent ap- 
peals for increased means of carrying on their 
duel with the Hunan pamphleteers, only claim- 
ing that their adversary be muzzled while they 
redouble their efforts to silence him. 

1 " To oppose enmity is to increase it. . . . There is much 
slang and obscene language in the streets which we, in most cases, 
cannot comprehend, but may see the effects of it on the faces of 
the by-standers. To go on with a religious discourse under such 
circumstances would show a want of good taste and judgment on 
the part of the preacher. . . . When an audience shows signs of 
profanity or indifference, then, a dignified silence is the best ora- 
tion. The Jews not only opposed the apostle, but they blas- 
phemed. This made any further preaching among them hope- 
less." — Dr. Faber. 



Anti-Christian Literature* 107 

With two such, and so widely different 
answers to their message to China before them 
it might seem reasonable for the propaganda to 
pause and consider what form the next answer 
may possibly take, whether in the near, or the 
distant future. But it is remarkable that the 
missionaries, so far at least as they may be con- 
sidered to be represented by the two learned 
gentlemen above cited, seem scarcely conscious 
of the possibility of evil resulting from this 
prodigious mass of what may be called dy- 
namic literature. 



io8 China and Christianity* 



IX. 



CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN. 



Some readers who have followed the theme 
thus far may possibly wonder that while frequent 
reference has been made to other countries 
there has been no allusion to the remarkable 
history of Christianity in Japan. But the cir- 
cumstances of that country and its people are 
so different from those of China that it might 
be misleading to make any comparison, except 
as a matter of curiosity. Japan is a State which 
may be said to have always known its own 
mind, and acted out its opinion. When she 
admitted Christianity she did so heartily ; when 
she suppressed it she did so relentlessly, but 
not without valid reason ; and when she read- 
mitted the religion it was as part and parcel of 
the general civilization of the Western nations 
to which by deliberate choice Japan opened 
wide her arms. By the promptitude of her 



Christianity in Japan* 109 

decision Japan avoided all appearance of coer- 
cion by foreign powers. (What, by the way, 
does Mr. Bosworth Smith mean by his repeated 
references to the criminality of Great Britain's 
wars with Japan ?) And her treaties contain 
no toleration clauses, nor any that are deroga- 
tory to her dignity, although an idea has been 
kindled in recent years that the extra-territorial 
stipulations do belong to that category. There 
is consequently no true analogy between the 
respective relations of China and Japan towards 
foreign nations, foreign religions and foreign 
life. The geographical proximity of the two 
countries does no doubt suggest to the Western 
world a similarity in their circumstances which, 
however, is only superficial ; and if their oppor- 
tunities of observing each other prompt some 
mutual emulation, that also is scarcely less 
superficial. Ships and guns, military drill, and 
material appliances may be copied, but what 
makes for the peace and prosperity of a nation 
is too deep for imitation, it must be a growth 
from within, nourished though it may be by 
atmospheric influences from without. Japan 
seems to be receiving Christianity in its most 



no China and Christianity- 

innocuous and enduring form, for the people 
are receiving it, and the pyramid is being built 
on the widest base. Of the many pleasing 
spectacles which a visit to that tourist's paradise 
always affords, perhaps none leaves a more 
agreeable impression than the decorous worship 
of large Japanese congregations conducted en- 
tirely by natives. And the vernacular religious 
press is now a recognized factor in the social 
system. The government there has no fears 
about its Christian subjects, whom it knows 
only as exemplary citizens ; and it winks at the 
pious frauds of the foreign missionaries who 
take out passports to travel for their health or 
in the pursuit of science, because it recognizes 
that it has the propaganda well in hand. The 
establishment of the Catholic Hierarchy in 
Japan affords the most substantial proof that 
the government of that country has adopted a 
policy of benevolent toleration towards Chris- 
tianity, based on the conviction that it will 
never have to account to foreign powers for its 
attitude towards either the religion or its fol- 
lowers. Added to which, the Japanese people 
are peculiarly sensitive to all foreign influences, 



Christianity in Japan, in 

and do not present that mass of stolid resistance 
which innovations encounter in China. The 
circumstances attending the introduction of 
Christianity into the respective countries, there- 
fore, present scarcely anything but sharp con- 
trasts, and probably no lesson for China can be 
drawn from Japan excepting such as could only 
be applied by reversing the wheel of history 
for fifty years, and undoing the chapter of evo- 
lution by which the new Japan itself has 
emerged from its secular isolation. 



ii2 China and Christianity* 



X. 

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

Reverting to the proposition with which 
we set out, China has been compelled by na- 
tions stronger than herself to admit their re- 
ligion, which, after full deliberation, she had 
decided to reject, and for reasons which, 
whether good or bad, were at least not unintel- 
ligible. Nor has any option been left to her 
as to which of the different forms of Christi- 
anity she would prefer ; she is forced to tol- 
erate the propagation of all indiscriminately, 
which is more than the nations which coerce 
her themselves do. In the irksome and anx- 
ious position into which they have been 
thrust, the leaders of the Chinese State have, 
so far, derived little support from either foreign 
statesmen or the leaders of the Propaganda. 
Dr. Williams himself, so long familiar to the 
government as Charge d y Affaires for the 



Practical Considerations. 113 

United States, in which capacity he must have 
been largely occupied with mission affairs, had 
no clearer or more practical counsel to be- 
queath to China than that : " The progress 
of pure Christianity" — so easy to write! — 
"will be the only adequate means to save the 
conflicting elements . . . from destroying 
each other." 

The Chinese opposition to Christianity dur- 
ing the last three hundred years has undoubt- 
edly taken arbitrary, harsh and cruel forms, 
yet considering that during nearly the whole of 
that period the sovereignty of China was under 
no foreign constraint, the forbearance with 
which she has treated recalcitrant missionaries, 
even during state persecutions, will compare 
not unfavourably with the record of similar 
persecutions elsewhere. 

Compelled by foreign powers suddenly to 
reverse the engines of state policy which had 
been gathering momentum in one direction for 
some centuries, the Chinese government has 
met the new conditions in as accommodating 
a spirit as could perhaps, under the circum- 
stances, have been expected. At the same 



ii4 China and Christianity. 

time it is plain to be seen, and ought to have 
been foreseen, that an act of state was not effi- 
cacious to change, as by a magician's touch, the 
hearts of a nation and of a numerous official 
hierarchy. 

Whether the Western governments were 
well or ill-advised in this exercise of their 
power is now of little practical significance. 
The historical transaction cannot be undone, 
nor the status quo ante in any manner restored. 
It remains only to be considered, what is 
China to do with regard to this force, — in- 
scrutable, indomitable, inflexible, yet, on its 
own conditions, passionately benevolent ? 

She cannot exclude or repress it, any more 
than she can exclude Influenza or the Mon- 
soon. She must receive it. She has already 
done so indeed, but with a bad grace — as was 
natural — and grudgingly ; a most dangerous 
half-measure. For she has- by her treaties 
given to foreign powers at least the semblance 
of the legal right to call her to account if she 
fails to protect Christian missionaries, while by 
her furtive and wavering action she allows offi- 
cials and people to furnish the foreign powers 



Practical Considerations* 115 

with constant pretexts for exercising that right. 
No position could be more hazardous for 
China, as many of her public men, who know 
something of the Western world, must be well 
aware. The pressure of Christianity will never 
abate ; it will on the contrary augment, and if 
it is difficult now to maintain an erect position 
in its presence it may be impossible to do so 
hereafter when the foreign religion has con- 
solidated its strength. In short, unless some 
other agency anticipates its slower action, Chris- 
tianity may be the force destined eventually to 
dissolve the Chinese, as it did the Western 
empire, and to destroy the present fabric of 
its society. 1 

To announce danger is easy ; not so the 
task of concerting measures to avert it. The 
difficulty of an effective co-ordination of the 
component forces of the Chinese State being 
formidable, the temptation to temporize is 
strong, for there is no man living, however 
pessimistic, but may expect the status quo to 
last at least his time, if not a good while beyond 
it. Few there be who dare to face the unpopu- 

1 See Note p. 37. 



n6 China and Christianity* 

larity which a judicious regulation of Christian 
affairs would entail in a country where there is 
so much to lose, so little to gain, by the active 
display of public spirit. The parallel between 
the China of to-day and the Rome of 1800 
years since, though imperfect and in many 
respects invalid, yet in certain features runs so 
close, that an imaginative Chinese might almost 
read the destiny of his own country in the 
events of that remote time. The Caesars were 
tolerant of the new religion, thinking it might 
mingle harmlessly with the numerous existing 
systems which, like it, had come mostly from 
the East. Though in theory it violated the 
laws, the Emperors were reluctant to put the 
laws in force ; and though without sympathy 
for the sect, they, like Kien-lung, could find 
no real fault in it, and were always recom- 
mending the Christians to mercy. Nor was 
the deference paid by the Caesars to popular 
sentiment very unlike that now shown by 
the Chinese Emperors to provincial opinion. 
Then, as now, the rulers were willing to pro- 
tect Christians alike from popular violence and 
official animosity, and though even Marcus 



Practical Considerations* 117 

Aurelius, a man saturated with ethics, allowed 
himself to be constrained to issue severe edicts 
against the Christians, like K c ang-hsi 1500 
years after him, yet as Mr. Lecky records, 
" the atrocious details of the persecutions in 
his reign were due to the ferocity of the popu- 
lace and the weakness of the governors of dis- 
tant provinces/' a not inapt description of some 
of the anti-Christian outrages in modern China. 
Unfortunately the experience of Rome fur- 
nishes no lessons for China except in the way 
of warning, and neither the ages of tumult 
during which the present Europe was being 
evolved, nor the actual position of these West- 
ern countries afford her any positive guidance; 
for none of them can be said to have dealt 
successfully with the religious problem. The 
United States of America, indeed, though not 
without a struggle, enjoy the supreme happi- 
ness of religious and political equilibrium, but 
that is the result of a situation absolutely 
unique, which cannot be imitated. The adjust- 
ment of the relations of Christianity to the 
Chinese State therefore can only be evolved, 
without direct aid from precedent, from the 



n8 China and Christianity* 

action of general principles which may be 
deduced from a diversity of experience. Re- 
ligious enthusiasm is a contingent factor, on 
which the Taiping episode sheds but a dim 
light ; and as to the form which Christianity 
will assume when eventually acclimatized in 
China, all that may safely be predicted is that 
the new amalgam will be unlike anything that 
has yet appeared in the world. Its main char- 
acteristics, however, will probably be to an in- 
definite extent determined by the circumstances 
of its mode of introduction. Which is a vital 
question for Chinese Statesmen and imperial 
counsellors to consider, could they but per- 
ceive its urgency. 

The problem is necessarily abstruse where 
unknown psychological factors are concerned ; 
and assuredly no solution of it will be attempted 
here. Nor is it perhaps within the competence 
of any man to work out an equation containing 
so many unknown qualities. What may be 
done, however, is to indicate one or two primary 
canons which should govern legislative and 
administrative dealings with the subject, canons 
based on ascertained and unalterable facts. For 



Practical Considerations* 119 

though the end of a journey may be hidden in 
mist one may advance in confidence if only 
the first steps be in the right direction, trusting 
that the way may become clear as successive 
stages are reached. 

I. The first canon by which the relations 
of Christianity should be regulated may be 
stated without hesitation. It is the complete 
fulfilment of existing obligations. China has 
undertaken by treaty to protect missionaries 
and to tolerate Christianity, and she must pro- 
tect and tolerate accordingly, without equivo- 
cation or reserve. No matter if the obligation 
was imposed by force, the nation and the gov- 
ernment stand bound to it in law, and therefore 
in honour, at least until they find themselves 
strong enough to make a fresh appeal to the 
tribunal under which the foreign treaties were 
imposed. To protect nominally, and yet se- 
cretly persecute, or connive at persecution, is 
not only a device unworthy of a civilized gov- 
ernment and of a body of highly educated men 
like the Chinese official class, but it is also the 
road to ruin. Unless therefore the ministers 



120 China and Christianity* 

who are responsible for the welfare of the State 
can nerve themselves to the required resolution 
it will be futile to discuss or manoeuvre at all 
in this matter, for whatever they do will be 
vain so long as the fundamental condition of 
success is not complied with. 

The difficulties in the way of the Chinese 
government so fulfilling its obligations to for- 
eigners are partially understood, and sympa- 
thized with by foreigners. But that feeling 
does not diminish by a feather's weight the 
gravity of the duty. The Imperial govern- 
ment is naturally, and properly, reluctant to 
humiliate its Viceroys to please foreigners, who 
are the objects of common aversion. The 
Viceroys have still stronger temptations to 
evade their duty to foreigners whenever it re- 
quires them to reprove their own subordinates, 
or still worse, bring under the discipline of the 
law men of influence who are detached from 
the regular service of the State. Yet nothing 
less than this is imperatively required of all 
who occupy posts of trust in the government. 
It is a duty, however, which, like many others, 
may be harder in anticipation than in execu- 



Practical Considerations* 121 

tion, and one which might evolve the needed 
strength by the action itself. A firm resolu- 
tion on the part of the Central government to 
tolerate no evasions from either high or low 
would of itself more than half accomplish the 
object, and one or two conspicuous examples 
made of contumacious officials might achieve 
it altogether. When men are sincere they are 
usually taken at their word, and the rulers of 
China would find their word would pass as 
good current coin of the realm as soon as they 
gave clear proof to their servants that they in- 
tended to make it so. 

Reduced to practice this canon would make 
short work of anti-Christian rioters and of the 
authors and publishers of calumnious attacks 
on Christians, as such. The men who have 
long been screened by powerful influences 
from the consequences of their shameless 
deeds would be punished like common male- 
factors, and the government would not wait to 
be stirred to action by foreign officials or pub- 
lic demonstrations, but would in all cases be 
beforehand with them, and thus leave abso- 
lutely no ground of complaint. 



ii2 China and Christianity. 

How far the Chinese government and rul- 
ing classes are at present from the attainment 
of such a standard of national duty need not 
be said. But it cannot be too strongly re- 
iterated that it is only in the full realization of 
the administrative ideal thus indicated that the 
government can hope to find salvation. 

II. The relations between the civil author- 
ities and the Christians should be settled and 
defined. 

It is too late in the day perhaps to regret 
that there should ever have arisen any question 
of special treatment of converts to Christianity. 
It is the wisdom of China, as of other states, 
to make all her people equal before the law ; 
and it is the foreign powers which are, prima- 
rily, answerable for forcing her government to 
deal with native Christians as if they really 
constituted a State within the State. But Chi- 
nese provincial officials have fallen easily into 
this way of regarding them ; notwithstanding 
that it was opposed to the declared policy of 
the empire. (See Appendix I.) It would in- 
deed be hard to say which of the two parties 



Practical Considerations* 123 

— the Christian or the anti-Christian — has 
evinced the greatest eagerness to effect the 
complete isolation of Christians from the body 
of the Chinese people. The questions deserve 
to be calmly weighed : — whether the segre- 
gating ■ process shall be allowed to extend ; 
whether it shall be arrested at the point which 
it has now reached; or whether even a retro- 
grade movement towards obliteration of the 
legal distinction between Christian and Hea- 
then shall be inaugurated. 

The holding of property away from the 
commercial ports by missionaries, under the 
French treaties of 1858—60, seemed to neces- 
sitate the official recognition of the Mission 
as a corporation, since individuals could not 
by the rules of their Orders acquire sites or 
erect Churches in their own right, and so the 
missions naturally became identified with the 
congregations. But sound property legisla- 
tion is one of the chief pivots on which the 
peace and order of communities turn ; and 
from the Chinese political point of view it 
was probably a misfortune that the missions 
in their collective character ever obtained so 



1^4 China and Christianity* 

much necessary consideration from the local 
authorities as to have buildings and ground 
officially registered in their name. 1 

The sequel is still an unwritten chapter of 
history, but hints are given from so many 
quarters, native and foreign, as to leave little 
doubt of the fact that congregations of Chris- 
tians in the interior are prone to club together 
for the common defence, and to abuse the 
protection which their foreign pastors, under 
the aegis of foreign treaties, are able to give 
them. It is the same spirit that prompts the 
native servants of Europeans at the treaty 
ports to rely on the prestige of their employ- 
ers to screen them from the consequences of 
their insolence to their countrymen. Experi- 
enced missionaries have to be constantly on 
their guard against plausible complaints of 
injustice made to them by their converts, but 
younger and more eager men, and those who 
are constitutionally disposed towards partisan- 
ship cc rush in " where the more wary " fear to 

1 The Chinese government found it necessary during the 
Ming dynasty, to limit the landed possessions of Buddhist mon- 
asteries to 60 mu, or 10 acres. 



Practical Considerations* 125 

tread ; " and take part in village-law suits 
which they are able to conduct with greater 
ability and force than natives working on their 
unaided resources. It may be admitted that 
the habitual laxity and dilatoriness which char- 
acterize Oriental procedure offer constant 
temptation to impatient outsiders to intervene 
in order to accelerate the despatch of business. 
Nothing but injury to the Christian name, 
however, can result from such illegitimate 
interferences, while it is not Christianity that 
is really at fault, but the cupidity of men, who 
may have entered the Christian community 
solely from these secondary motives. 1 

It would seem to be a very fair thing for 
the Chinese government to appeal to the con- 
sideration of Western governments in this 
matter, and if it could but come into court 
with clean hands, that is to say, having scru- 
pulously fulfilled its own obligations under 
treaty, the Western governments could 
scarcely help listening to the plaint. 

1 " Whole villages have offered to turn Christians " to gain 
" the powerful influences of foreigners on their side in some liti- 
gation." — Rev. R. H. Graves, in Chinese Recorder. 



126 China and Christianity. 

All foreigners residing or travelling in the 
interior under passport should be strictly for- 
bidden by their own authorities from med- 
dling in any dispute between Chinese, whether 
Christians or not. Such prohibition need not 
in the least impair the influence of private 
counsel in promoting goodwill, but as there is 
no judgment in the common affairs of life 
more fallible than that of the average ecclesi- 
astic, of any communion, such an interdict 
could not but have a salutary effect on the 
peace of Chinese communities. 

That some Christian pastors would vehe- 
mently resist any legislation tending to disinte- 
grate their Christian communities is highly 
probable ; and, from their point of view, they 
would have valid reasons on their side. There 
is doubtless this real difficulty in the way, that, 
as the Chinese Christian by breaking away 
from the traditions of his family and neigh- 
bours generally forfeits his status as a member 
of the clan or village-community, it is natural 
that he should strive to regain the lost position 
through the creation of a new caste, or social 



Practical Considerations* 127 

unit, — the Christian commune, with its offi- 
cers corresponding to village elders, and enjoy- 
ing equal legal recognition with the villages 
themselves. Dr. Faber, whose logical mind 
cannot rest in equivocations, claims these privi- 
leges in the clearest terms, on the broad, if 
somewhat ingenious, ground, that the Chris- 
tians, having by the foreign treaties been 
absolved in certain matters from the law of 
the land, obey the paramount Divine Law, 
which gives them the right to toleration, and 
toleration means privileges. It may be as 
much the duty of the Christians, as such, to 
prefer these claims as it is of the government 
to deny them ; but there is here in fact the 
germ 1 of the secular trouble between the 
religious and the civil power. A Christian 
body capable of unlimited expansion, follow- 
ing a divine law which is above the law of the 
land, with the Christians themselves as its sole 
interpreters, is precisely that kind of social 

1 The germ of that phase of the development of Europe 
which is thus epigrammatic ally summed up by Ranke : " Eccle- 
siastical estates were no longer described as situated in certain 
counties, but these counties were described as situated in the 
bishoprics." 



128 China and Christianity* 

organism which any civil government may jus- 
tifiably treat with reserve. 1 But how, then, 
it may be asked, is the adjustment between 
the parties to be effected, and a modus vivendi 
to be established. The government might 
reply that, as it is the Christians who have 
created the difficulty, it is for them either to 
find a solution or to bear the inconvenience 
of waiting until one is found ; but that the 
government meanwhile has the duty to dis- 
charge of preventing any Christian or other 
body from getting the upper hand of the civil 
magistrate. 

In practice, no doubt, the danger to the 
Chinese government from the political aspira- 
tions of Christians is much diminished by the 
miscellaneous character of the Christian bodies. 
They have divided themselves, and may be 

1 " To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines 
of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect 
to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Govern- 
ment could exist only in name under such circumstances." — 
Judgment of Chief-Justice Morrison R. White, in the Supreme 
Court of the United States. — Schaff. 

" If government commands us to act against conscience and 
right, disobedience becomes a necessity and a duty." — Ibid. 



Practical Considerations. 129 

more easily ruled than if they were compact ; 
and so a state of things which is to be deplored 
from the point of view of Christian progress 
serves conveniently to lighten somewhat the 
burden of the government. 

III. A third canon would provide for the 
preservation of peace, and the prevention of 
wanton provocations between different religion- 
ists. Rival sects should, by virtue of the 
power inherent in every civilized state to main- 
tain order among its people, be compelled to 
keep their feelings under discipline in all as- 
semblies and public places. The objects and 
the rites of Christian worship are not infre- 
quently reviled or mocked, and the anger of 
the worshippers thereby provoked ; and, on 
the other hand, it is far from uncommon for 
converts, and even for missionaries themselves, 
to inveigh against the native customs and the 
native gods ; both practices tending to breaches 
of the peace, which ought therefore to be made 
amenable to the law. 1 Sometimes the attacks 

1 " If any person shall abuse or deride any other for his or 
her different persuasion and practice in a matter of religion he 
shall be looked upon as a disturber of the peace and be punished 
accordingly." — Laws of Pennsylvania. — SCHAFF. 



130 China and Christianity* 

on idolatry are made in mere mockery, ex- 
amples of which find their way into foreign 
journals, and are presumably common in the 
preaching of evangelists. 1 This is, to say the 
least, bad taste; but it is more, it is an offence 
against decency to cast ridicule on the honest, 
however mistaken, devotions of a fellow-mor- 
tal ; 2 and it is an offence both against good 
order and the laws of hospitality when it is 
done by an alien. 3 The first Apostles of 

1 "Anybody acquainted with Chinese will soon find, if he 
attends the foreign street chapels a few times, that the hostile 
attitude of many missionaries towards the most cherished beliefs 
and feelings of the Chinese is frequently expressed in a most 
offensive manner. As for the books ... let those interested 
read some of the elementary catechisms or some of the books 
dealing with ancestral worship, idolatry or other superstitions of 
the Chinese, and he will find these things discoursed on in any- 
thing but a kindly spirit. Chinese hear offensive statements in 
the chapels, get angry, and denounce the missionary to their 
friends. They read the books . . . and determine to pay out 
the hated barbarian at the first opportunity." — "A Sincere 
Friend to Both Parties." — JV. C. Herald, 26th February, 1892. 

a " To revile with malicious and blasphemous contempt the 
religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of 
that right " [the right of " free and decent discussion. "] — Chief 
Justice Kent in Supreme Court of New York, 181 1. — ScHAFF. 

3 The foreign missionaries sometimes applaud the courage 
of their converts in openly reviling the false gods, and sometimes 
they deplore the indiscretion of such sallies, according to circum- 
stances and individual temperament. 



Practical Considerations. 131 

Christianity were particularly tender with the 
religious susceptibilities of the people among 
whom they moved, so that the sensible magis- 
trate, the town-clerk of Ephesus, in his address 
to the rioters, was able to testify that these 
early missionaries "were not blasphemers of 
our goddess." Their successors in the next 
two or three centuries were not so considerate ; 
iconoclasm becoming rampant with the corrup- 
tion and the triumph — almost synonymous 
terms — of the Church, when the great Am- 
brose allowed himself to scoff even at the 
virginity of the poor Vestals. It were a good 
and laudable thing if all blaspheming of each 
other's gods could be rigorously suppressed by 
the civil power. This is also a matter on 
which Western governments might be ap- 
proached, and solicited to frame appropriate 
rules for the governance of their nationals. 
Then a foreign missionary affronting native 
religion in any public manner might first be 
warned by the local authority, and, if recalci- 
trant, conducted to the nearest consul for de- 
portation, while condign punishment would be 
equally meted out to any Chinese who should 



132 China and Christianity ♦ 

vituperate Christianity. Complete reciprocity 
in this matter should be insisted upon, and 
each party made to do as he would be done by. 1 

Two drawbacks to any such procedure will 
readily suggest themselves : the laxity and 
irregularity of Chinese official practice ; and 
the scarcely avoidable abuses by underlings. 
The most difficult attainment for a Chinese 
official is to maintain a just measure in the per- 
formance of his functions, — to be firm without 
being harsh ; and the difficulty of furnishing 
foreign governments with adequate guarantees 
for moderation would probably prove fatal to 
any arrangement whereby new powers over 
foreigners would be placed in Chinese hands. 

Meagre and superficial though these sugges- 
tions be, and perhaps not judiciously selected 
from the heap of desiderata, they are yet so far 
in advance of what is proximately realizable 

1 As for the sectarian quarrels of Christians inter se, prob- 
ably no regulations could be framed to check them ; but the 
spectacle of two foreign missionaries meeting in a Chinese thor- 
oughfare, one warning the people against the religion of Henry 
VIII., and the other against the worship of a mere woman, can 
hardly, one would think, advance either of the divisions of Chris- 
tianity, or be approved by any reasonable man. 



Practical Considerations* 133 

that it would serve no purpose of interest or 
utility, at this stage, to pursue that part of the 
subject into greater detail. 

Nevertheless the procedure here recom- 
mended involves no theoretical innovation, for 
the principles are only those which have been ex- 
plicitly and repeatedly laid down by the highest 
authority in the land, and are, moreover, based 
on the religious toleration which was worked 
out centuries ago, and became the settled 
national policy not later than the Sung dynasty, 
A.D. 960-1280. The Edicts of Tao Kwang 
may be taken as a convenient starting point for 
the new departure in Christian toleration (see 
Appendix I.), and all the State papers which 
have been issued during the past fifty years 
have been in harmony therewith. The Gov- 
ernor Shen Pao-chen, in 1862, developed the 
doctrine of toleration with a breadth of charity 
towards Christians which left little to be desired, 
and what gave the highest value to his memo- 
rials is that his expositions were not theoretical, 
but were suggested by specific occurrences within 
his official jurisdiction to which he fearlessly 
applied the principles deduced from his obser- 



134 China and Christianity* 

vation of facts and his knowledge of the impe- 
rial policy. The same official, when Viceroy 
of Kiangnan in 1876, had occasion once more 
to discuss the rules which should govern the 
relations between foreign missionaries and the 
Chinese people, when he pushed his former 
arguments into still greater detail ; his de- 
spatches convinced Dr. Edkins that Shen Pao- 
chen " anticipated the spread of Christianity in 
China to proceed in the same way as was the 
case with Buddhism and Taoism in former 
centuries." And Dr. Edkins takes Shen Pao- 
chen as the mouth-piece of his government. 

Tseng Kuo-fan, than whom no more authori- 
tative exponent of the permanent policy of 
China has been known in this century, in a 
memorial which was never intended for publi- 
city, also lays down the same law of toleration, 
for " while other religions rise and fall from age 
to age the doctrines of Confucius survive un- 
impaired throughout all ages." And so all 
other authentic public documents. 

What is needed, therefore, is to give practi- 
cal effect to the declared will of the government, 
and had this been done sooner, overt violence 



Practical Considerations* 135 

towards the missionaries might possibly have 
been avoided, however far the people might 
have been from receiving their teaching. 

Before, however, practically considering any 
general regulations for mutual toleration, there 
is one preliminary duty incumbent on the 
Chinese government in order to qualify it for 
entering on the discussion. It must deal de- 
cisively with obnoxious publications such as 
those which are regularly issued from Hunan. 
By these productions the literature of China is 
stamped with indelible disgrace, for since their 
ofFensiveness has provoked foreigners to repub- 
lish them they will henceforth expose to all the 
world the ignorance, vulgarity, and intellectual 
prostitution of Chinese scholars, as well as their 
contemptible attainments in the graphic art. 
In this guise will the writers of the Ta-tsing 
dynasty enjoy an immortality of infamy in all 
Western lands, for these choice specimens of 
their works will be preserved, like flies in amber, 
in every library in Europe and America. The 
Hunan scholars will be known in future genera- 
tions as those who in order to injure foreigners 



136 China and Christianity ♦ 

did not scruple to debauch the minds of their 
countrymen with ideas as filthy as they are 
false. These disgusting books are acknowl- 
edged to be the efficient cause of the riots 
which bring humiliation on the government 
and penalties on the people. The names of 
their authors are well known, thanks chiefly to 
the pertinacious investigations of Dr. Griffith 
John, who has done admirable service in the 
elucidation of the history of these matters ; but 
because they are literary graduates enjoying 
the protection of high personages 1 the authors 
have been allowed to escape the penalty of their 
disloyal acts. If the government be not will- 
ing to extinguish this source of conflagration 
then it is evading its obligations under the 
foreign treaties and making itself a participator 
in the crime, thus exposing itself to reprisals at 
the hands of foreign powers whenever it may 
suit their convenience to enforce their rights. 
If, on the other hand, the government be not 



1 " He (Chou Han) knows well that he is looked upon as a 
philanthropist, that he has the real sympathies of the officials on 
his side." — Dr. Griffith John in JV. C. Daily News, 19th 
April, 1892. 



Practical Considerations. 137 

able to suppress this infamous literature, then 
it is not the Emperor who rules, but the authors 
and publishers of these pamphlets. In either 
case these publications, so long as they are in 
circulation, constitute a standing inculpation of 
the government, which will warrant foreign 
powers in assuming its guilt in any given case, 
without further inquiry. 

What is, perhaps, more serious still is that 
the same or similar shocking calumnies against 
Christians are repeated in the King-sz-wen, the 
collection of State papers, treaties, memorials, 
etc., before cited, the latest edition of which, 
published in 1888, came out under the auspices 
of Chinese officials occupying the highest posi- 
tion in the State. 



138 China and Christianity. 



XI. 

RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO PEOPLE, LITE- 
RATI, AND IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT. 

Let it be assumed, however, that a working 
scheme for the treatment of Christianity based 
on such general principles as have been sug- 
gested shall have been elaborated and carried 
into effect — a very large assumption indeed — 
still the end of the Christian troubles would by 
no means have been reached. The hostility 
of the literary and official classes, though out- 
wardly suppressed, would suffer no real abate- 
ment, but would smoulder, like a subterranean 
fire, ready to break forth whenever the repres- 
sion was relaxed. 

The popular suspicions also would persist 
virtually intact ; the dread of witchcraft, the 
belief in secret abominations, the mutilations 
of the sick or dead, and all the rest, still would 
remain to be lived down slowly. Substituting 



Relation of Christianity* 139 

impiety towards ancestors for atheism these 
imputations are substantially identical with 
those made against the primitive Christians in 
the West, where they survived through several 
centuries of Christian progress. The pulses of 
China do not beat faster than those of the 
Western races, nor is the intelligence of the 
common people more advanced. And if it 
should take a century or two for the Chinese 
Christians to clear their characters from these 
odious suspicions there is no help for it, and 
the Christians must even learn to bear it, until 
they can convert their present minority into a 
majority, 1 when the charges would vanish into 
air. Possibly the censorious eyes of neigh- 
bours may even be a salutary discipline, keep- 
ing the converts on their good behaviour. 
The finer qualities of Christianity shine bright- 
est in adversity, and the Church would be in 
evil case were all men to speak well of it. 
This reflection might even be stretched to 
cover persecution in general as being condu- 

1 " We have patiently to wait till a powerful minority, if not 
a majority, of the Chinese people is Christianized." — Dr. 
Faber. 



X 



140 China and Christianity* 

cive to the healthy growth of Christianity ; for 
to what extravagances might an unopposed 
Chinese Church not run ! 1 Woe, indeed, be 
to him by whom the offence comes, but still, 
to apply a phrase coined for a very different 
occasion, to the opposition to Christianity in 
China, si elle n' ' exist ait pas il faudrait Vinventer. 
In one respect the Chinese Christians have 
the advantage over their Western prototypes. 
They do not themselves give countenance to 
the calumnies, whereas the early Christians did 
not scruple to throw at the heads of heretics 
the vile accusations brought by the heathen 
against themselves. Nor is it certain that such 
inter-Christian amenities have entirely disap- 
peared even yet from contemporary history in 
the West. 2 

1 " Rome is best when competing with Protestant rivals — in 
the midst of hostile criticism and alien institutions ; worst when 
she has it all her own way." — R. H. Hutton. 

2 A recent occurrence in Europe illustrates the vitality of 
these odious superstitions. In the town of Xanten, in Rhenish 
Prussia, a boy was found in a shed dead from a wound in his 
throat. Suspicion fastened at once on a Jewish butcher named 
Buschoff, owing to the popular belief that the Jews require blood 
at certain seasons for their religious rites, and the artistic cut in 
the boy's neck being held to betray the practised hand of the 
carnifex. The Christian people became so infuriated against 



Relation of Christianity* 141 

While waiting, however, for the populace to 
get their minds purged from these degrading 
notions something may and ought to be done 
by the officials and literati to uncover the real 
truth in regard to Christian practices. They 
have at once the means and the intelligence to 
sift the facts and to prove or disprove what 
has been alleged. 1 It is true that even officials 
and scholars are credulous enough to believe 
many of the slanders which are circulated 
about foreign missionaries. The Emperor Tao 

the Jew that, to save him from being lynched more Americano, 
the authorities took him in charge and put him on his trial. The 
testimony of the witnesses was vociferous and overwhelming, 
the gentry corroborating the populace; but when subjected to 
the cool analysis of the lawyers the evidence was shown to be 
only crystallised gossip, the offspring of an inveterate general 
belief in the occult practices of the Jews. But had not the 
accused conclusively established an alibi it might still have gone 
hard with him. So great, indeed, was the excitement that the 
official responsible for the trial at first demanded a battalion of 
soldiers to keep order, the burgomaster declining to be answer- 
able for the peace of the town. Eventually the dignity of the 
legal tribunal was maintained without the resort to military force. 
These things took place in the best educated country in Europe 
in the summer of 1892. 

1 See the emphatic contradiction of the false reports of a 
magistrate given in Li Hung-chang's memorial published in the 
Peking Gazette of 16- 17 th February. 



142 China and Christianity* 

Kwang himself, when issuing an Edict of tol- 
eration/ as we have seen, could not help 
encouraging the belief that the Christians really 
picked out the eyes of the sick. But with all 
mission establishments and practices thrown 
open to the inspection of Government officials 
- — a thing which is gradually coming to be 
thought necessary — there would be no excuse 
for these officials continuing in their present 
state of dangerous ignorance. And when they 
shall have once satisfied their own minds they 
can the better clear away the doubts of the 
common people by disseminating truthful re- 
ports. If the literates of Hunan are willing 
to expend their time and money in printing 
and publishing calumnies which befoul the 
paper they are written on, it would be a small 
thing for the officers of the government to 
give the public the benefit of their discoveries 
in the region of ascertained fact. And this 
would be no more than a tardy reparation for 
the injury done to the reputation of the Chris- 
tians and for the debauching of the imagina- 
tions of the illiterate masses. 

1 Appendix I. 



Relation of Christianity ♦ 143 

Were a modus vivendi ever established with 
the populace and the literati the relation of 
Christianity to the Supreme government itself 
would probably present few difficulties. From 
the earliest appearance of foreign religions in 
the country the sovereign has been, as a rule, 
favourably disposed towards each of them in 
succession ; and, except in the few instances 
where devotion to one creed biassed them 
against others, the Chinese Emperors have been 
the defenders of the struggling religion against 
the attacks of the official hierarchy. With such 
a record before them the hope of Christianity 
being one day established as the national faith 
may easily assume a concrete shape in the 
minds of the foreign missionaries. Perhaps it 
is the dream of some and the ambition of 
others that Christianity may once again secure a 
footing in the Imperial palace. One emperor, 
indeed, of the present dynasty has already tan- 
talized the propaganda with delusive hopes, 
standing near the baptismal font, but intending 
only to deceive the missionaries. Members 
of his family were actually converted, and in 
the persecution which ensued on the death of 



144 China and Christianity. 

Kang-hsi the first and greatest victims were 
the princes and princesses of the imperial 
house. One was said, indeed, to have stood 
very near the throne, perhaps too near, for 
Oriental autocrats do not relish in their sight 
too many eligible successors, and it is not 
altogether incredible that the virulence with 
which Yung-cheng pursued the Christians was 
inspired by the jealousy which he naturally 
felt of his own brothers and their conversion 
was perhaps the only pretext under which 
he could lay hands on them. 1 A century 
before the reign of Yung-cheng, a Chinese 
Constantine and an Empress Helena were 
baptized, the forlorn hope of the Mings in 
Kwangsi. The time may come when an actual 
occupant of the Dragon Throne may take the 
plunge. But in the interest alike' of Christian 
progress and national peace it is to be hoped 
the consummation of such hopes may be de- 
ferred, long enough at least to allow Chris- 
tianity to have first rooted itself in the country 

1 " The Jesuits in Peking joined a plot to supplant this 
emperor by a younger brother." — Rev. J. Ross, Chinese Re- 
corder, August, 1892. 



Relation of Christianity* 145 

by the force of its own principles. 1 A Christian 
Emperor would be a doubtful blessing whether 
he were a mere political convert like Constan- 
tine, or a religious Fury like Saint Louis, or 
some Taiping Wang with a passion for putting 
nonconformists to the sword. In any of the 
cases that can be conceived, the consequences 
almost certainly would be what they have 
always been, the fanatics and the quacks, even 
though in a small minority, ruling the Church, 
importing into their administration of it all the 
time-worn abuses, each section serving its own 
turn by abetting the schemes of the others. 2 
The fanatics, from the moment of their obtain- 



1 " In the Christianizing of Britain the work uniformly began 
with the King and nobles, and from them worked down to the 
lower classes, instead of leavening first the people and finally 
reaching the King. . . . This explains the ease with which the 
profession of Christianity could be made or unmade at the 
pleasure of the ruling sovereign, and explains also how the gross- 
est heathenism could linger long after the leaders of the nation 
had been baptized." — Rev. H. Kingman, in Chinese Recorder, 
September, 1892. 

2 " To all movements, wise or foolish, flock the two classes 
of follower, the sincerely convinced and the insincerely affiliated ; 
those who think they are establishing the law of righteousness 
on this earth, and those who see nothing but their own advan- 
tage." — Mrs. Lynn Linton, Nineteenth Century, March, 1882. 



146 China and Christianity. 

ing the power, would turn on those sects which 
they might deem heretical and crush them by 
the aid of the politicians, who would care for 
none of these things. And like the persecu- 
tion of dissidents and unbelievers in Europe 
and Western Asia the oppression of Chinese 
by Chinese under an orthodox empire might 
even exceed that inflicted under a heathen 
regime. A nation thus rent by religious fac- 
tion, or dominated by a religious party would 
be a sorry result of Christian effort. Yet even 
that is one of the conceivable dangers ahead, 
remote as it may now appear. 

Such gruesome speculations may evoke pro- 
tests, and the pure principles of modern Chris- 
tianity combined with the refinement of the 
twentieth century may be appealed to as guar- 
anty of a reign of peace and charity under any 
possible Christian rule. But there is no sort 
of ground for believing that China will begin 
her Christian development just at the point 
which Europe has reached after 1900 years of 
conflict; and the principles of modern Christi- 
anity are not purer than those of the primitive 
Church, which no sooner combined with the 



Relation of Christianity* 147 

passions of men than disturbances resulted 
which have never entirely subsided. The re- 
ligion has to assimilate in China, as elsewhere, 
the local worship, mythologies, popular super- 
stitions, — modifying them perhaps out of 
recognition. It has to absorb, and eventually 
to transmute, dormant passions of an order 
low, but of torrential force when excited, as we 
have seen, the ultimate resultant being beyond 
human calculation. Organisms which have 
maintained a measured and regulated life in 
regions where they have been long accli- 
matized are apt to develop unsuspected en- 
ergies when transplanted to new situations. So 
perhaps it may be with the Christianity which 
is hereafter to cover China ; no one can foresee 
how it will modify and be modified by its en- 
vironment, nor toward which of the existing 
forms it may approximate. Until therefore 
the religion has established itself in the com- 
mon life of the people 1 its professors may well 
deprecate its adoption by the State. Converts 
are not often made to Christianity in the ab- 

1 " The gospel should first strike root in the hearts of simple- 
minded persons who receive it for what it is." — Dr. Faber. 



148 China and Christianity* 

stract, 1 but to some branch or section of the 
Church. Which ? let them ask themselves 
who may be tempted to pray for an imperial 
proselyte, and a national Church. 

There remains a present and practical point 
of contact between the Imperial Throne and 
the propagation of Christianity, which is some- 
times alluded to by the foreign press. In 
the Sacred Edict, or series of Homilies insti- 
tuted by the Emperor K c ang-hsi and amplified 
by his successors, and appointed to be pub- 
licly read twice a month in all the cities of the 
empire (in imitation, it is supposed, of the 
preaching of the early missionaries) there is an 
article which animadverts on the tenets of 
Christianity and warns the people against that 
religion. With a superficial show of reason, 
this is claimed by some foreign missionaries to 
be in contradiction to the toleration clauses in 
the various foreign treaties. But the point is 
of dubious validity. In the first place a doc- 
trinal admonition is not an incentive to vio- 
lence ; nor is the toleration of Christianity 

1 President Lincoln, a profoundly religious man, attached 
himself to no Church. 



Relation of Christianity. 149 

inconsistent with opposing it by argument. 
In the second place the passage in the Sacred 
Edict should be taken in its practical rather 
than in its theoretical bearing. For an Em- 
peror deliberately to rescind the solemn enact- 
ment of a revered ancestor would be a very 
extreme measure ; to expunge even a section 
would be a serious matter. It is in fact never 
done. The Chinese Emperors are as careful 
not to run counter to the public acts of their 
predecessors * as the Popes are to maintain at 
least apparent harmony in their successive 
Bulls ; and in cases where a reversal of policy 
may become a State necessity, the most con- 
summate skill in the manipulation of phrases, 
with a view to keeping up the semblance of 
consistency, is called into play, as well in 
Peking as in Rome. It appears however the 
officials of their own accord discovered a via 
media by which the susceptibilities of the for- 
eigner were spared, for as Dr. Edkins relates 
in his work on cc Religion in China," the 

1 This is fully recognized in the temperate letter from the 
Evangelical Alliance in Shanghai to H. E. Mr. Von Brandt, 
Doyen of the Diplomatic body. — Messenger, April, 1892. 



150 China and Christianity* 

Town-Clerk of Shanghai, as probably in other 
places where there were foreigners, simply 
omitted the objectionable clause in his fort- 
nightly reading. Like the Commination ser- 
vice and the Athanasian Creed in many 
English churches, it was treated as an anach- 
ronism, and allowed quietly to drop. 

The animus of the Edict becomes further 
attenuated when the reference to Christianity 
is taken in connection with similar reflections 
on Taoism and Buddhism, the idolatrous prac- 
tices of which are held up to the people as 
matters to be shunned. For the emperor who 
propounded the Edict himself openly patron- 
ized the Buddhists, as his successors have done 
on several marked public occasions. Indeed 
the Lama government of Tibet which the 
Emperors had no choice but to support, pro- 
viding large establishments for the worship and 
residence of the priests within and without the 
walls of Peking itself, would have made any 
real opposition to Buddhism on the part of the 
Emperors somewhat ridiculous. 

It has been shown, however, by Dr. Griffith 
John that the article in the Sacred Edict is 



Relation of Christianity* 151 

appropriated by the Hunan pamphleteers as a 
base for their calumnies, and as the justification 
of the outrages to which they incite the people. 
And he therefore claims the rescission of the 
passage in chapter seven of the Sheng-yil which 
has been so used. c< The expunging of this 
one passage . . . would do more than any- 
thing else," etc. 

This is not, however, the first time in reli- 
gious history that atrocities have been justified 
by the misuse of sacred texts, yet it has never 
been proposed that the passages so used should 
be forthwith expunged from the Canon. The 
condemnation of those who had dared so to 
pervert the sense of the Sacred Edict 1 would 
probably have been in this case a more feasible 
thing to demand and a simpler thing for the 
government to grant. 

1 "It is not the first time that superstitious and rancorous 
fanaticism has quoted respectable, and even really sacred writings 
in its favor ... I hope it is not too late to plead that the grave, 
and on the whole reasonable edict may not be associated by any 
but the Hunan criminals with their foul productions." — Bishop 
Moule. 



152 China and Christianity* 



XII. 

ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY. 

The Reformatory proposals of this charac- 
ter which are freely thrown out by foreigners 
on all sides for the guidance of the Chinese 
government, seem to be after all quite anoma- 
lous. The whole practice of foreign agents 
tinkering at details of internal administration 
needs reconsidering. The circumstances of 
China and the passive temper of the govern- 
ment have admitted far more of this kind of 
interference than would be tolerated in any 
other country, but the results have scarcely 
justified the departure from orthodox usage, 
and some more effective remedy should, if 
possible, be devised. 

Treaties were forced on the empire engaging 
it to new and unknown obligations. As 
regards one class of these, the commercial 
stipulations, much care was taken on both 



Administrative Machinery* 153 

sides to provide machinery whereby the treaty 
provisions could be put in force smoothly, and 
a body of " Trade Regulations " far more 
elaborate than the treaties themselves, and of 
equal authority, were drawn up by competent 
officials. If such precautions were necessary 
with regard to a matter so clear and intelligible 
as commerce, how much more was it necessary 
to provide for the operations of religious prop- 
agandism respecting which it was quite certain 
that there was no common intelligence between 
the parties ! Yet the sweeping clause grant- 
ing religious toleration once inserted in the 
treaties, the negotiators seem to have given no 
further thought to the matter, leaving the prac- 
tical solution of the question to be the sport 
of accident. The Rev. G. T. Candlin, in a 
letter to the Manchester Guardian^ has pointed 
out this defect in a very lucid manner, and he 
attributes much of the missionary troubles to 
that very cause. No consideration whatever 
was shown to the Chinese government which, 
ignorant of the plans by which the propaganda 
intended to fulfil this part of the treaty, was 
left to discover them gradually by the collis- 



154 China and Christianity. 

ions between the evangelists and the officials 
and people. It was as if the British Parlia- 
ment were to vote Home Rule for Ireland, 
and leave Orangemen and Catholics to work 
out the details in the streets. 

Take for illustration the single item of the 
acquisition of sites and construction of build- 
ings, the acknowledged source of three-fourths 
of all the missionary disturbances in China. 
At the Treaty ports where foreign consular 
agencies are maintained in effective activity, the 
most minute precautions are prescribed by 
authority with a view to the prevention of 
friction between foreigners and natives. The 
Consul has to be a party to negotiations for the 
purchase of ground, has to approve of every 
step, and to investigate if there be any secret 
impediments to the transfer to the foreign 
buyer. After completion of the transaction 
the title deeds issued by the local Chinese 
authority have to be deposited with the Con- 
sul who retains control of all subsequent trans- 
fers. Every safeguard is thus provided against 
disputes in places where communities of for- 
eigners and natives have learned through the 



Administrative Machinery* 155 

daily intercourse of life to tolerate each other, 
and where therefore the dangers arising from 
misunderstandings are but slight. 

But in the interior of the country, several 
weeks' journey from any consul, where there 
is nothing but raw inflammable material on 
one side and zealous men, perhaps undisci- 
plined in the common affairs of life, on the 
other, not only are no proper regulations pro- 
vided for the aquisition of property, but even 
the legal rights of the missionaries are left 
without any authoritative definition. One 
half of them in fact proceed on one theory of 
their legal status under treaty, and the other 
on another, with none to guide them in their 
interpretation of state documents which may 
be inconsistent with each other ; and they are 
left to discover, perhaps by the light of their 
burning houses, those hidden flaws in the 
tenure of ground which at a treaty port would 
have been ascertained for them by their Con- 
sul before the consummation of the purchase. 

Chinese officials, perplexed by the uncer- 
tainties of these proceedings, are sometimes 
tempted to seek an illegitimate remedy by 



156 China and Christianity. 

making in particular localities rules which are 
one-sided and unworkable. Foreign critics, 
perceiving the offence more clearly than the 
provocation, denounce such tentative regula- 
tions as subtle devices to hinder missionary 
work. And though no doubt such would be 
in many cases their effect, it would be fairer to 
consider them as in their inception a protest 
against certain defects in the international 
arrangements, for which the foreign treaty 
powers are chiefly responsible. 

And even when explosions have occurred 
the foreign governments instead of taking the 
whole question seriously in hand and endeav- 
ouring to concert with the Chinese govern- 
ment a working scheme whereby missionaries 
and people might co-exist in peace have been 
content with spasms of recriminations and 
occasional interferences with the administration. 
There was a specific always ready for each 
new outbreak, and simply by forcing such and 
such a measure on the Chinese the foreign 
ministers flattered themselves that they were 
laying the ghost of missionary trouble. At 
one time it might be some proclamation or the 



Administrative Machinery* 157 

placarding of treaties that was to have the 
magic effect of settling everything ; at another 
an Edict was insisted on ; and yet, again, the 
partial abrogation of some older Edict ; or the 
arrest and punishment of an individual man, 
or the personal visitation of foreign officials to 
the scene. On one special occasion — un- 
connected, however, with Christian troubles — 
the government was superseded in its func- 
tions by an itinerant judicial commission com- 
posed of the nominees of a foreign Minister 
who imagined he could thereby elicit informa- 
tion in the remote interior which official 
efforts combined to conceal from him. All 
such devices imposed by foreigners were of 
course easily rendered nugatory by the ostensi- 
ble compliance but secret frustration of the 
government. 1 In a country, too, where false 



1 " In the proclamations put out under foreign pressure the 
animus was perceptible to all who could read between the lines. 
... So evident was it that the proclamation of August 30th [in 
Canton] had caused the riots that one of the Consuls at least, 
plainly told the Viceroy so, and the Chinese generally admit that 
the issuing of this paper was a grave mistake." — Rev. R. H. 
Graves. 

" Such a proclamation would have had no more effect in 



158 China and Christianity* 

accusation has been elaborated into a fine art 
it were futile to rely on the text of official 
papers for protection. All the Christians in 
China might be persecuted to death without a 
single allegation against them respecting their 
religion. The memorial of Kiying in 1844, 
which heralded the new era of toleration, is 
based on the alleged continuity of the imperial 
policy, which had never interdicted the Chris- 
tian religion, though it had punished persons 
accused of criminal practices, who happened to 
be Christians. 1 A Chinese official who is 
degraded, and deserves it, is rarely charged 
with the real offence, but some other, often 
far-fetched, delinquencies are trumped up 

Macedonia than so many dozens of them have had in China." — 
Dr. Faber, Paul. 

" It is a common custom for the Court of Peking to issue 
double sets of instructions for the provincial governors. One set, 
appearing in the Gazette, is intended for the eye of the foreign 
ministers . . . but it is the other set which represents the real 
policy of the government." — Shanghai and Hankow Committee 
of Evangelical Alliance, 1885. 

1 The systematic duplicity is well exposed in a publication by 
the late Peng Yu-lin, which has recently been translated under 
the title of " Indulgent Treatment of Foreigners," and issued from 
the office of the Shanghai Mercury . It is a most important con- 
tribution to the elucidation of these questions. 



Administrative Machinery* 159 

against him. No doubt there may be valid 
reasons for this oblique manner of proceeding, 
as, for instance, that the real charge might 
implicate third parties whom it was not desired 
to censure ; but at any rate the practice is con- 
secrated by immemorial usage, and the Chris- 
tians have no ground for expecting immunity 
from its operation. None of these empirical 
remedies in fact ever have had the desired 
effect on the relations between the people and 
the missionaries, and the suggestive faculties 
of the foreign officials have been exhausted 
without result. 

The problem was in truth much too deep to 
be solved in any such perfunctory manner, and 
obviously the foreign ministers ought either to 
have dug down to the roots of the question, 
or treated it in quite another fashion, for their 
fitful interferences and nerveless discussions 
have only served to relieve the Chinese gov- 
ernment of much of its moral responsibility 
for the execution of the treaties. The Treaty 
Powers ought in fact still to make good their 
great omission, and in concert with China, 
draw up " Missionary Regulations " as they 
did Trade Regulations thirty-four years, ago. 



160 China and Christianity* 

But what would have been easy if done at the 
proper time would not be so now, owing to the 
accumulated difficulties which invariably close 
in over neglected opportunities. 1 A combina- 
tion of the foreign powers would seem to 
be essential to the drafting of any general 
scheme, but unfortunately there is no agree- 
ment among them, and as far as present 
appearances indicate there is no near prospect of 
any. When the treaties were made there was 
practical harmony between the only powers then 
represented, and whatever they might have 
established would have bound all subsequent 
treaty-makers. 2 Then, the thirty-four years 

1 On the other hand, however, the thirty years' experience of 
legalized missionary work has furnished data for practical rules of 
intercourse which could hardly have been anticipated by the 
original negotiators of treaties. The conditions of travel and 
residence might now be more intelligently defined, and the pass- 
port system — to specify one item — so far modified as to confer 
the status of permanent resident on missionaries who are now 
officially recognized only as travellers in the country. 

2 It should be remembered, to the credit of the statesmanship 
of Lord Elgin, that when negotiating the English Treaty he re- 
strained himself from extorting concessions from China which in 
time to come might be taken undue advantage of, under their 
most -favoured-nation clauses, by Powers which having taken no 
part in the opening of the country, might be less sensible of re- 
sponsibility than the original Treaty powers. 



Administrative Machinery. 161 

years which have elapsed since Christianity 
was legalized and left to pursue its way in 
China, while they have been fruitful in valu- 
able experience have also given time for the 
growth of such irritation among officials and 
people as to embitter intercourse between them 
and the foreign and native Christians. The 
situation has consequently become so compli- 
cated that a bold initiative seems to be required 
from one quarter or another to restore a work- 
ing equilibrium. The foreign powers, how- 
ever, not only abstain from taking such initia- 
tive, but give a freezing reception to tentative 
proposals emanating from the Chinese govern- 
ment. The Memorandum of 1871 1 remains, 
with all its faults, the only attempt as yet made 
to bring about an amicable agreement, and the 
Powers to whom it was addressed have neither 
discussed it nor made any counter-proposals of 
their own. 

If, however, the foreign governments, from 
whatever cause, refuse to assist in the elabora- 
tion of a scheme of missionary relations, their 

1 As this state paper is often referred to and is not always 
accessible, it is given in extenso, as Appendix II. 



1 62 China and Christianity* 

safest alternative would be to leave the details 
of internal administration alone, and simply to 
insist on every Treaty engagement being ful- 
filled to the letter, letting the Chinese find for 
themselves the modus operandi. It is a recog- 
nized principle in international affairs that 
domestic legislation is overruled by Treaty 
obligations, and where there is inconsistency 
between the two, it rests with the government 
in fault to accommodate its internal machinery 
to its external engagements in the way most 
convenient to itself. The other party merely 
holds to the Treaty and requires its fulfil- 
ment, refusing to discuss the mechanism of ad- 
ministrative economy, which it could never in 
any case understand. 



Mutual Obligations, 163 



XIII. 

MUTUAL OBLIGATIONS. 

The government and the literary classes of 
China are, as we have seen, engaged in a con- 
test, sometimes secret, sometimes open, with a 
spiritual force whose true nature they under- 
stand less than they do the nature of electri- 
city ; a force which would gladly live on good 
terms with them, but which, in any case, will 
live with, and probably after, them. 

Their objections to the Western religion, 
whether well or ill-founded, can in no wise be 
allowed, for Christianity will not be denied en- 
trance, no matter what obstacles be opposed 
to it. 

The Western governments, on the other 
hand, which broke down the Chinese wall and, 
by right of conquest, compelled the nation to 
receive foreign missionaries, were, and are, 
morally bound to assist the government of 



164 China and Christianity* 

China to devise means whereby the unwelcome 
religion may be admitted with the minimum of 
friction ; but they evade the obligation. Nei- 
ther, indeed, could they fulfil it if they would, 
without such union among themselves as, un- 
der existing circumstances, seems unattainable. 
For a moment's reflection on the respective 
positions of the Great Powers is sufficient to 
show the unlikelihood of any steady concerted 
action among them. Though in national 
concerns nice scruples have to give way to im- 
perious interests, there still exists something in 
the nature of a public conscience to whose re- 
quirements the most powerful states pay at 
least a formal deference. More than one of 
the Powers having relations with China would 
find their hands somewhat tied by considera- 
tions of this kind. What sincerity, for exam- 
ple, might Russia be expected to throw into 
any scheme of forcible protection of a propa- 
ganda in China, which at home she utterly 
prohibits ? Anti-clerical France, which subor- 
dinates her interest, even in the Catholic mis- 
sions, to her other ends could never be relied 
on to support in China those Protestant mis- 



Mutual Obligations. 165 

sions which she expels from her African do- 
minions. How, again, could the United 
States join in pressing China to receive and 
protect either American or other missionaries 
while, in the face of treaty engagements, they 
refuse standing room for Chinese on their 
wide territory ? And Spain — what figure 
would she make as the Defender of the British 
and Foreign Bible Society ? There would re- 
main of course Great Britain, Germany, and 
Italy, catholic and comparatively clean-handed, 
who might act together with a tolerably easy 
conscience. But is it quite sure that such 
a triple alliance would be allowed by the ab- 
stinents a free hand to protect Christianity in 
China ? Experience seems rather against such 
a supposition. The concert of the Powers, 
therefore, appears to be little more than a 
diplomatic platitude, and viewed in this light, 
the armed forces of Christendom have con- 
ferred on Christianity in China only a compro- 
mising alliance while leaving it, in the stress of 
conflict, to the mercy of exasperated foes, yet 
ready nevertheless to step in, in the last resort, 
to avenge some ideal atrocity. 



1 66 China and Christianity* 

Common action therefore seems out of the 
question, and without common action on the 
part of foreign powers no ordinances of 
the Chinese could take effect, because the 
missions belong to various nationalities, and 
none of them would respect rules not sanc- 
tioned by their own representatives, while 
separate rules for each would be entirely un- 
workable. 

The Powers may, of course, cut the Gordian 
knot with the sword, as has been done more 
than once ; and if they, or even any one of 
them, would but consistently apply this method 
the question might soon be solved and set at 
rest. For the officials, scholars, and people, 
once compelled to respect and protect Christians 
without chance of evasion, would become ha- 
bituated to the forms of toleration, and might 
in time learn to practise voluntarily what they 
had been trained to do by force. But enforced 
toleration — almost a contradiction in terms — 
to be effective would admit of no exceptions 
and no wavering. Conciliation may be good, 
and compulsion may be good; but the oscilla- 
tion between the two is nearly certain to fail, 



Mutual Obligations. 167 

because, for one thing, the alternating phases 
would be pretty certain to be exhibited at the 
least appropriate times. 

Failing, then, assistance from foreign govern- 
ments or their representatives, the Chinese 
rulers are thrown back on their own resources 
to discover a modus vivendi between their 
people and the promiscuous elements, foreign 
and native, which make up the Propaganda. 
These resources are inadequate to the task : 
first, because of the inexperience of Chinese 
statesmen and their non-comprehension of the 
character of Christianity ; and secondly, on 
account of their preconceived antipathy, latent 
and active by turns, to the religion, and their re- 
pugnance to all candid examination of it. This 
characteristic must paralyze, by tainting with 
insincerity, any unaided efforts of Government 
to devise a basis of agreement with the propa- 
ganda. Notwithstanding these disqualifica- 
tions, however, the Chinese government cannot 
escape the necessity of dealing with this grave 
question, though its action in regard to it 
seems, by the very nature of the case, fore- 



1 68 China and Christianity* 

doomed to barrenness. For the evasive policy 
of the government opposed to the more con- 
sistent tactics of the propaganda must produce 
continuous friction, generating heat, and lead- 
ing, not seldom, to explosions. 

It would almost appear, therefore, that the 
conflict, like a biological ferment, must run its 
course without any intelligent direction from 
the parties principally concerned ; and, if the 
history of the invasion of Buddhism may be 
taken as a precedent, centuries of strife may 
have to be waded through before the struggle 
can issue in settled peace. 

But as in the most desperate condition of 
any State there are still individuals <c who do 
not despair of the republic,' ' but are animated 
with courage even to resist fate, so there may 
not be wanting in China statesmen who, in 
spite of adverse circumstances, will do their 
best to smooth the way for the accommodation 
of Christianity in this country, some from 
motives of temporary expediency, and some, 
perhaps, from an awakening conviction of the 
blessings which the religion, notwithstanding 
the faults of its propagators, has to offer them. 



Mutual Obligations* 169 

The light cannot for ever be excluded, how- 
ever resolutely men may close their eyes 
against it ; and in time one and another, even 
of the Chinese literati, many of whom are now 
seriously inquiring into its merits, mast be 
able, as in the days gone by, to appreciate 
Christianity. To suppose otherwise indeed 
were to concede it to be the imposture 
which the literati as a body now affect to 
regard it. 

But while the Western governments stand 
paralysed by disunion and conflicting interests, 
and the Chinese government and governing 
classes are floundering in the dark, there is an 
important third party, the propaganda itself, 
which being endued with light as well as heat, 
ought to play an effective part in the solution 
of the religious question in China. Being 
prima facie responsible for the existence of the 
trouble the onus rests peculiarly on the mis- 
sions to send a peaceful issue out of the imbro- 
glio, and to find some broader ground to stand 
on than that of mere contention for the utter- 
most rights conferred on them by the letter of 



170 China and Christianity* 

the treaties. 1 The case is not uncommon in 
the Western hemisphere where laws made in 
advance of the opinion of the community 2 can- 
not be enforced without violence, and where 
the beneficiaries, realizing this, submit to the 
waiving of rights which have been definitively 
secured to them by statute. 

The pretensions of foreign missions in China 
are of such a nature as to entail upon them an 
exceptional degree of moral responsibility for 
the consequences of their action ; and from 
which shelter is not to be found within the four 
corners of any legal instrument whatsoever. 
For they assume authority, without appeal, 
over the minds and consciences of millions of 
human beings ; they claim absolute superiority 
over the long line of teachers and moralists 
who have preceded them in China : they exer- 

1 " Such forcing, based on treaty rights, maintained by much 
disagreeable correspondence between foreign consuls and Chinese 
high mandarins, has done a great deal to' shut up the hearts of 
the people against the Gospel." — Dr. Faber. 

2 " You cannot have that steady, firm, consistent administra- 
tion of the law permanently established until you have brought 
the provisions of the law and the sympathies of the people into 
harmony." — Mr. Gladstone in House of Commons, August 
9th, 1892. 



Mutual Obligations. 171 

cise, without reserve, the prerogative of eradi- 
cation of all customs, religions, and worships 
which they disapprove, under a divine mandate 
attested by themselves. From such an order 
of men it were surely not unreasonable to look 
for some with capacity to manage this perplex- 
ing question without constant explosions and 
appeals to brute force. Force implies failure 
in almost all the circumstances of life where 
resort to it is necessary ; and the Christian 
mission bodies owe it to their own cause and 
character to show that they are at least not ob- 
livious of the high qualities which their self- 
assumed position requires of them. 

Christian societies in sending out missionaries 
do not thereby discharge, but incur, obligations 
of the gravest character. The evangelization 
of China is not the simple numerical problem 
it is often assumed to be, and long lists of 
missionaries and columns of subscriptions are 
of themselves no true cause for gratulation. 
If the parent bodies weighed their own respon- 
sibilities conscientiously they would rank the 
quality of mere fervour somewhat low, and 
would choose their agents rather for their 



172- China and Christianity ♦ 

liberality of education and temperament, their 
catholic human sympathies, their common sense, 
their aptitude to learn from observation and 
experience, and their freedom from dogmatic 
assurance. The office of missionary to a people 
like the Chinese demands exceptional gifts, and 
the ranks cannot be filled from the waifs and 
strays of religious life without endangering the 
whole enterprise. One man of the right stamp 
is worth a thousand impatient zealots, who 
accomplish no permanent good themselves, and 
by their indiscretions destroy the influence of 
those who work on a sounder basis. 

Happily this sense of responsibility seems 
to be spreading in missionary circles. There 
have been, and are, serious men in the various 
missions who cannot shut their eyes to the 
light of the world, and there are some who, 
especially in their declining years, question 
themselves deeply concerning the manner and 
results of their life's labours, and cast about 
earnestly for some more excellent way, if by 
any means discoverable. Such an one, it may 
now be said without impropriety, was the late 
Dr. Williamson who sunk to rest only two 



Mutual Obligations* 173 

years ago. And there is probably an increas- 
ing number who instinctively look first for 
faults on their own side, whose feelings towards 
the shortcomings of the Chinese are something 
more humane than pity and more Christian 
than contempt. Since the foregoing pages 
were written there has appeared an essay by a 
worthy follower of Dr. Williamson, the Rev. 
G. Candlin, reprinted in Chinese Recorder for 
March, 1892, in which the tactics of provoca- 
tion and mere destructive attack on native be- 
liefs and institutions is shown to be by no 
means the most effective way of transforming 
them. The welcome of such a candid deliver- 
ance by the editors of a mission organ proves 
that the reasonable school is gaining courage, 
and seems like the dawn of a brighter day. 
From the extension of such a school there would 
be much to hope, both for the progress of 
Christianity itself, and also for its peaceful con- 
tact with the official and lettered classes. 1 

The whole history of missions testifies that 
there is no personal sacrifice or bodily risk 

1 See also a courageous and straightforward paper by the 
Rev. J. Ross, of Moukden, in Chinese Recorder, August, 1892. 



174 China and Christianity* 

which Christian teachers would not incur for 
the sake of the propagation of their faith. In 
order to free their cause from its political asso- 
ciations many would willingly forego the pro- 
tection of their own governments ; some would 
go further, and divesting themselves of their 
birthright, would cheerfully accept the full con- 
ditions of Chinese nationality. Such ideas of 
course can never be more than pious aspira- 
tions, for the protection extended by civilized 
states to their citizens, being based on the 
interest of the whole community, cannot be 
switched on and off, like an electric light, by 
individual caprice. Still less is it within the 
competence of any one to exempt himself by a 
private resolution from the obligations inherent 
in his nationality. As his government would 
remain responsible for him he would still be 
answerable to his government. And were 
even the detachment from country and kin- 
dred legally effected the missionary would still 
not have attained his object, for no metempsy- 
chosis could undo his origin and lineage. He 
would remain essentially the alien, though 
stripped of the privileges and abjuring the pre- 



Mutual Obligations. 175 

tensions appertaining to an extra-territorialized 
foreigner. And ten-to-one but the Chinese 
would see in his renunciation only a more un- 
fathomable depth of cunning. 

But if willing to do the " great thing " 
which is not required of them, the mission 
leaders should also be, as no doubt they are, 
ready to promote less heroic measures for the 
improvement of the situation. Were it pos- 
sible to bring the parties together on some 
neutral platform where a dispassionate inter- 
change of views might take place between 
moderate and reasonable men selected from 
both sides, such a conference would not per- 
haps be wholly barren of result. Assuming 
that there is no radical incapacity on either side 
for appreciating the position of the other, and 
presuming peace to be the common object, an 
earnest effort to secure it, even if but partially 
successful in its specific aim, could hardly fail 
to achieve something in the direction of a 
mutual understanding. And any rapproche- 
ment which would admit of the Christian pro- 
paganda being carried on with fewer of those 
violent concussions which have hitherto marked 



176 China and Christianity* 

its advance would be an object well worthy of 
such efforts. 

The obstacles in the way of organizing any 
kind of deliberative concourse are formidable 
and obvious. For the Chinese it would be a 
revolutionary innovation on their traditional 
methods of procedure ; and for a mixed body 
composed of numerous independent members 
like the foreign Missions it would not be a 
very simple matter to concentrate effective 
authority on any selected representatives. 
The difficulty of arriving at such an under- 
standing is naturally greatly diminished in the 
case of the Catholic section of the propaganda, 
where the representative apparatus already ex- 
ists in a highly organized form. Other hope 
failing, therefore, it seems to be after all to the 
Vatican and its disciplined agents that the 
Christian world will have to look, if anywhere, 
for extrication from its dilemma in China ; for, 
having been repulsed elsewhere, it is to that 
quarter that the Imperial government would 
naturally address itself, if the personal and 
national schemes of foreign diplomatists would 
but permit it so much liberty of action. 



Mutual Obligations* 177 

To discuss the terms of a possible Concor- 
dat, whether partial or general, while as yet the 
steps preliminary to any agreement whatever 
cannot be marked out would be altogether pre- 
mature. Much ground has to be gone over, 
even under the most favourable circumstances, 
before the desired composition of differences 
can be brought within the sphere of practical 
politics. 

Should it eventually be demonstrated that 
reconciliation between the parties is unattain- 
able it would nevertheless be a real gain even 
to ascertain that much, so that the air might 
be cleared of distracting illusions. The Chris- 
tian propaganda would then be able to con- 
tinue the contest with China on definite con- 
ditions, and China would know better what it 
had to deal with. It may be that the actual 
struggle for existence is as essential an element 
in the evolution of religious systems as it is in 
that of other forms of life, and that all attempts 
to evade its hard conditions are but amiable 
weaknesses ? Left alone with its Pagan an- 
tagonists Christianity would no doubt in the 
end fight its way to victory ; although the re- 



178 China and Christianity* 

markable collapse of the missions in High 
Asia, after a fierce conflict sustained for many 
centuries by an energy which can never be 
surpassed, and the extinction of mediaeval 
Christianity in China proper by religions much 
inferior to itself, stand as warnings to the propa- 
ganda that ultimate triumph, though sure, may 
have to be purchased dearly, and may be long 
deferred. 

As for the Chinese government, its neglect- 
ing the opportunity of " agreeing with its ad- 
versary " would be only too much in keeping 
with its general laissez-faire policy, which per- 
mits destructive inundations, famines, insur- 
rections to devastate the country, without 
prevision or precaution on any adequate scale, 
and which conducts its external relations in 
such a negligent manner as continually to in- 
vite territorial aggression. 

In conclusion, let not the inadequacy of the 
treatment obscure the greatness of the subject. 
For, above all the local friction, ephemeral 
disputation and political veering and hauling ; 
above the shiftiness of some and the intensity 
of others, above the fret and fuss of the day's 



Mutual Obligations, 179 

work, we really stand in the presence of one 
of those grand cosmic conjunctures which shape 
human destinies. It is one half of the world 
which is challenging the other half; all Chris- 
tendom gathering its strength to subdue all 
Paganism. Each of them is strong by what 
there is in it of truth and nobleness, while our 
judgment is bewildered by the error and pre- 
judice which cling to them both ; and if the 
very term we are compelled by the infirmity of 
our language to employ to mark their antithesis 
seems to beg the question as to their relative 
merits, it is but a nickname which may be 
balanced by the coinage of some equally dis- 
paraging term on the other side. Both forces 
are majestic in their wide and enduring sway 
over the hearts of men, in their impulse to 
virtue, in sustaining the human spirit in its 
struggle for light. None of the historic con- 
flicts of the race, though carried on with clamour 
and bloodshed, have been laden with vaster 
issues ; for this, in its true essence, is a contest 
of mind against mind. The whole life and 
growth and morality, linked together through- 
out long ages, of the largest human society the 



180 China and Christianity* 

Sun ever looked upon, actually circulating in 
the blood of the. living men of to-day, — this 
entity which we call China — is invited, nay, 
summoned, to surrender much that, in its own 
opinion, has immortalized the nation. View 
it how we may, and with all possible deduc- 
tions, the grandeur of a people who have come 
through the stages of human development not 
only intact, but expanding and unified, who 
have made magnificent attempts to solve the 
mystery of the Unseen, and who have dis- 
tilled out of their philosophical speculations a 
system of practical ethics which has served 
them, without revision, for more than two 
thousand years — must command the homage 
of civilized men. 

On the other hand, the forces opposed to it 
have also their history and their rich experi- 
ences. The leaven which has worked in the 
Western races, inspiring their greatest achieve- 
ments and imbuing them with the principle of 
extension and advancement works still with 
unabated energy. It is that vital principle 
which after many centuries of effort, has at 
length brought the forces of Christendom to 



Mutual Obligations* 181 

the gates of the East, where, with or without 
ceremony, they demand admittance. With all 
reasonable qualifications, Christendom is prob- 
ably not too arrogant in claiming for itself pre- 
eminence among the families of man. 

We who live near the very meeting points 
of the two powers can only by a mental effort 
dimly conceive the magnitude of the issues 
which are being worked out under our eyes. 
Where is the man who can understand the 
epoch, blend the opposing currents into whole- 
some and vital union, guide them into safe and 
fruitful channels ; and from the blackening sky 
conduct the storm-fluid innocuously to earth ? 



APPENDIX I. 

*H 

MEMORIAL OF IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER 
KIYING, 1844. 

Kiying, imperial commissioner, minister of 
State, and governor-general of Kwangtung and 
Kwangsi, respectfully addresses the throne by 
memorial. 

On examination it appears that the religion 
of the Lord of Heaven is that professed by 
all the nations of the West ; that its main 
object is to encourage the good and suppress 
the wicked ; that since its introduction to 
China during the Ming dynasty it has never 
been interdicted ; that subsequently, when 
Chinese, practising this religion, often made it 
a covert for wickedness, even to the seducing 
of wives and daughters, and to the deceitful 
extraction of the pupils from the eyes of the 
sick, government made investigation and in- 
183 



184 Appendix I. 

flicted punishment, as is on record ; and that 
in the reign of Kiaking special clauses were 
first laid down for the punishment of the 
guilty. The prohibition, therefore, was di- 
rected against evil-doing under the covert of 
religion, and not against the religion professed 
by the western foreign nations. 

Now the request of the French ambassador, 
Lagren6, that those Chinese who, doing well, 
practise this religion, be exempt from crimi- 
nality, seems feasible. It is right, therefore, 
to make the request, and earnestly to crave 
celestial favour to grant that, henceforth, all 
natives and foreigners without distinction, 
who learn and practice the religion of the 
Lord of Heaven, and do not excite trouble 
by improper conduct, be exempted from crim- 
inality. If there be any who seduce wives 
and daughters, or deceitfully take the pupils 
from the eyes of the sick, walking in their 
former paths, or are otherwise guilty of crimi- 
nal acts, let them be dealt with according to 
the old laws. As to those of the French and 
other foreign nations who practise the religion, 
let them only be permitted to build churches 



Appendix L 185 

at the five ports opened for commercial inter- 
course. They must not presume to enter the 
country to propagate religion. Should any act 
in opposition, turn their backs upon the trea- 
ties, and rashly overstep the boundaries, the 
local officers will at once seize and deliver 
them to their respective consuls for restraint 
and correction. Capital punishment is not to 
be rashly inflicted, in order that the exercise of 
gentleness must be displayed. Thus, perad- 
venture, the good and the profligate will not 
be blended, while the equity of mild laws will 
be exhibited. 

This request, that well-doers practising the 
religion may be exempt from criminality, I 
(the commissioner), in accordance with reason 
and bounden duty, respectfully lay before the 
throne, earnestly praying the august Emperor 
graciously to grant that it may be carried into 
effect. A respectful memorial. 

Taukwang, 24th year, nth month, 19th 
day (December 28, 1844), was received the 
vermilion reply : " Let it be according to the 
counsel [of Kiying]." This is from the Em- 
peror. 



1 86 Appendix L 



Second Memorial of Kiying, 1845. 

Now I find that, in the first place, when 
the regulations for free trade were agreed upon, 
there was an article allowing the erection of 
churches at the five ports. This same privi- 
lege was to extend to all nations ; there were 
to be no distinctions. Subsequently the com- 
missioner Lagrene requested that the Chinese 
who, acting well, practised this religion, should 
equally be held blameless. Accordingly, I 
made a representation of the case to the 
throne, by memorial, and received the impe- 
rial consent thereto. After this, however, 
local magistrates having made improper seiz- 
ures, taking and destroying crosses, pictures, 
and images, further deliberations were held, 
and it was agreed that these [crosses, etc.] 
might be reverenced. Originally I did not 
know that there were, among the nations, these 
differences in their religious practices. Now 
with regard to the religion of the Lord of 
Heaven — no matter whether the crosses, pic- 
tures, and images be reverenced or be not 



Appendix L 187 

reverenced — all who, acting well, practise it, 
ought to be held blameless. All the great 
western nations being placed on an equal foot- 
ing, only let them be acting well, practise their 
religion, and China will in no way prohibit or 
impede their so doing. Whether their cus- 
toms be alike or unlike, certainly it is right 
and there should be no distinction and no 
obstruction. — December ii> 1845. 

Imperial Rescript on Above. 

On a former occasion Kiying and others laid 
before Us a memorial, requesting immunity 
from punishment for those who doing well 
profess the religion of Heaven's Lord ; and 
that those who erect churches, assemble to- 
gether for worship, venerate the cross and pic- 
tures and images, read and explain sacred books, 
be not prohibited from so doing. This was 
granted. The religion of the Lord of Heaven, 
instructing and guiding men in well-doing, 
differs widely from the heterodox and illicit 
sects ; and the toleration thereof has already 
been allowed. That which has been requested 



1 88 Appendix L 

on a subsequent occasion, it is right in like 
manner to grant. 

Let all the ancient houses throughout the 
provinces, which were built in the reign of 
Kanghi, and have been preserved to the pres- 
ent time, and which, on personal examination 
by proper authorities, are clearly found to be 
their bona fide possessions, be restored to the 
professors of this religion in their respective 
places, excepting only those churches which 
have been converted into temples and dwelling- 
houses for the people. 

If, after the promulgation of this decree 
throughout the provinces, the local officers ir- 
regularly prosecute and seize any of the pro- 
fessors of the religion of the Lord of Heaven, 
who are not bandits, upon all such the just 
penalties of the law shall be meted out. 

If any, under a profession of this religion, 
do evil, or congregate people from distant 
towns, seducing and binding them together ; or 
if any other sect or bandits, borrowing the 
name of the religion of the Lord of Heaven, 
create disturbances, transgress the laws, or ex- 
cite rebellion, they shall be punished according 



Appendix L 189 

to their respective crimes, each being dealt 
with as the existing statutes of the Empire 
direct. 

Also, in order to make apparent the proper 
distinctions, foreigners of every nation are, in 
accordance with existing regulations, prohibited 
from going into the country to propagate 
religion. 

For these purposes this decree is given. 
Cause it to be made known. From the 
Emperor, 



APPENDIX II. 
as 

CIRCULAR OF THE CHINESE GOVERN- 
MENT, 187 1. 

(COMMUNICATED BY THE FRENCH CHARGE D'AFFAIRES.) 

Translation. 

The object which the Powers and China had 
before them originally in signing the treaties 
was to establish a permanent situation which 
should ensure them reciprocal advantages and 
remove abuses. However, the experience of 
the. last few years has demonstrated that not 
only do these Treaties not attain this desired 
end of permanency, but also that, up to the 
present time, they are difficult to carry into 
execution. Trade has in no degree occasioned 
differences between China and the Powers. 
The same cannot be said of the missions, 
which engender ever increasing abuses. Al- 
190 



Appendix IL 191 

though in the first instance it may have been 
declared that the primary object of the missions 
was to exhort men to virtue, Catholicism in 
causing vexation to the. people, has produced 
a contrary effect in China. (This regrettable 
result) is solely attributable to the inefficacy of 
the plan of action (followed in this matter). 
It is, therefore, urgent that steps should be 
taken to remedy this evil, and to search for a 
satisfactory solution of the difficulty. In fact, 
this question is one bearing upon those which 
influence the leading interests of the peace of 
nations, as well those of their trade, which are 
equally considerable. Wherever the Catholic 
missionaries have appeared, they have drawn 
upon themselves the animadversion of the 
people, and your Excellency is not ignorant 
that cases which have arisen during the course 
of several years embraced points of disagree- 
ment of every kind. 

The first Catholic Missionaries who estab- 
lished themselves in China were called " lite- 
rates " of the West. The greater part of the 
conversions took place at that time among 
respectable people. On the other hand, since 



192 Appendix II. 

the conclusion of the Treaties took place 
(i860) the majority of the converts are persons 
without virtue ; so that religion, whose object 
is to exhort men to virtue, no longer enjoys 
any consideration. From that moment con- 
sciences have become a prey to uneasiness. 
The Christians have none the less continued, 
under the shadow of missionary influence, to 
mislead and oppress the people : thence arose 
renewed uneasiness, then quarrels between 
Christians and non-Christians, and, at last, 
disturbances. The authorities proceed to in- 
vestigate the affair ; the missionaries make 
common cause with the Christians, and sup- 
port them in their insubordination against the 
same authorities. Thereupon the feeling of 
disquiet which pervades the people assumes 
greater proportions. Yet more : veteran 
rebels, beyond the pale of the law, amateurs 
in intrigue, seek a refuge in the Church, and 
lean upon her influence in order to commit 
disorders' At this moment the animosity of 
the people, already deep, degenerates gradually 
into a hate which, at length, reaches its par- 
oxysm. The people in general, unaware of 



Appendix II. 193 

the difference which exists between Protestan- 
tism and Catholicism, confound these two 
religions under this latter denomination. 
They do not grasp the distinction which should 
be made between the different nations of which 
Europe is composed, and give to Europeans 
the generic name of " men from without ; " 
so that, when troubles break out, foreigners 
residing in China are all exposed to the same 
dangers. Even in the provinces where con- 
flicts have not yet taken place uneasiness and 
suspicion will certainly appear among the 
people. Is not such a state of things of a 
nature to occasion a lively feeling of irritation, 
and, as a result, grave disorders ? The differ- 
ence which exists between the religions and the 
nationalities are truths which are still beyond 
the comprehension of the masses, in spite of 
constant efforts which have been exerted in 
order to make them appreciate their nature. 
The Prince and the members of the Yamen, 
during the ten years in which they have been 
at the head of affairs, have been a prey to 
incessant anxiety. These precautions have 
been justified by the events at Tientsin, the 



194 Appendix IL 

suddenness of which was overwhelming. The 
proceeding against the functionaries (compro- 
mised) have been begun, the murderers have 
suffered capital punishment, an indemnity 
has been paid, and relief given ; but, al- 
though the affair may to-day be almost 
settled, the Prince and the members of the 
Yamen cannot throw off the uneasiness which 
they feel. In fact, if this policy is the only 
one on which one can rely (to settle) the differ- 
ences between Christians and non-Christians, 
it will become more precarious in proportion 
to the necessity there will be to recur to it 
oftener, and disorders like those of Tientsin will 
be repeated more terribly each time. If the 
matter is looked at under its present aspect, the 
question is, how is it possible to be on good 
terms and to live on either side in peace ? It 
is not only to the hatred engendered by the 
suppressed animosities of the people, but de- 
cidedly also to the provocations of the Chris- 
tians, that the conflicts on the missionary ques- 
tion which arise in these provinces must be 
attributed. If, on one side, these conflicts may 
have been brought about by the relative in- 



Appendix IL 195 

capacity of the local administration, they can 
certainly also be attributed to the conduct of 
the high Chinese and European functionaries 
charged with the direction of affairs (affecting 
the two countries), who, knowing the want of 
conciliation in the attitude of the missionaries 
and Christians, show no good will in seeking 
for the means of remedying the evil. 

With regard to the Europeans, they only 
aim at getting rid of the difficulties of the mo- 
ment, without troubling themselves whether 
by so doing consciences are disturbed ; to em- 
ploy coercion is all that is thought of. On the 
other hand, the local authorities have only one 
object, that of bringing the matter to a close. 
Care for the future goes for nothing in this 
short-sighted policy. But if we seek, in con- 
cert with the Europeans, to secure by effica- 
cious means a really lasting understanding, we 
do not find among these latter the desire to 
found the discussion on equitable bases. 
When this discussion arises, they place before 
us unacceptable means which they wish to im- 
pose on us by force, in order to be able to put 
a stop to the matter. That is, in truth, not the 



196 Appendix II. 

good and true way to take care of the interests 
of the two countries. Anxious about the whole 
matter, and sincerely desirous that concord and 
peace should reign forever between China and 
Europe, the Prince and the members of the 
Yamen are bound to seek the best means to 
secure this result. Their belief is, that there 
are ecclesiastics everywhere in Europe, and that 
their presence abroad is therefore without dan- 
ger to good harmony. The maintenance of 
this happy state of things is, doubtless, due to 
the employment of certain means, and to the 
fact that ecclesiastics and Christians abstain 
from provoking conflicts. The Prince and 
members of the Yamen have heard that these 
same ecclesiastics, to whatever nationality they 
might belong, respected the law and customs 
of the country where they dwelt ; that they 
were not allowed to constitute in them a kind 
of exceptional independence for themselves ; 
and that the faults of every kind, such as con- 
traventions of the law, insubordination towards 
the authority of functionaries, abuses and usur- 
pations of powers, acts prejudicial to the repu- 
tation of the people, and oppressive towards 



Appendix II. 197 

the people, which provoke its suspicions and 
its resentment, are there severely repressed. If 
the missionaries, before constructing the reli- 
gious establishments in China and preaching 
their doctrine there, avoided making themselves 
odious to the principal men and people, the 
suspicions would disappear, to give place to a 
mutual confidence; concord would be perma- 
nent ; one would not see churches destroyed, 
and religions attacked. If these same mission- 
aries, in pursuit of their work, could inspire in 
the masses the conviction that their acts are 
not opposed to their teaching ; if, remaining 
deaf to the instigations of the Christians, they 
avoided by denying themselves all interference 
in the local administration, giving the support 
of their influence to arbitrary and oppressive 
acts which engender hatred among the notables 
and the people, they might live in perfect har- 
mony with the people, and the functionaries 
would be in a position to protect them. Far 
different is the conduct of the persons who 
now come to China to propagate therein the 
Christian religion. From the information 
which the Prince and the Yamen have gathered 



i9 8 Appendix II* 

(respecting the duties imposed on them by 
their priesthood), these persons found as it 
were among us an undetermined number of 
States within the State. How, under these 
conditions, can we hope that a durable under- 
standing should be established, and to prevent 
the governors and the governed uniting against 
them in common hostility? 

The Prince and the members of the Yamen 
are impressed with a desire to ward off from 
henceforth eventualities so menacing. In fact, 
they fear in all sincerity lest, after the arrange- 
ment of the Tientsin affair, the animosity of 
the ignorant Christians of the Empire should 
take a more decided tone of insolent bluster, 
that the bitterness of the popular resentment 
should increase, and that so much accumulated 
bad feeling, causing a sudden explosion, should 
bring about a catastrophe. It would then be 
no longer possible for the local, authorities, nor 
for the high provincial functionaries, nor even 
for the Tsung-li Yamen, to assert their author- 
ity. In the event of a general rising in China, 
the Emperor will be able to appoint high dig- 
nitaries to order them to assemble everywhere 



Appendix IL 199 

imposing forces ; but the greatest rigour does 
not reach the masses, and where their anger 
manifests itself, there are persons who refuse to 
yield their heads to the executioner. Then, 
when the evil becomes irremediable, and when 
the wish we all have to preserve so great inter- 
ests will no longer be effectual, the men who 
direct the international affairs of China and of 
Europe will not be suffered to decline the re- 
sponsibility which falls on them. In short, 
in the direction of affairs, the important point 
in China as in Europe, is to satisfy opinion. 
If failing in this duty, oppression and violence 
are employed, a general rising will at last take 
place. There are moments when the supreme 
authority is disregarded. If the high function- 
aries of China and the Europeans on whom 
rests the responsibility of the affairs which now 
form the object of our anxiety, remaining un- 
moved spectators of a situation which threatens 
the greatest danger to the Chinese people, as 
well as to strangers, traders and individuals, 
make no effort to find a solution which may 
effectually remedy the evil, it will follow that 
it will be out of their power to deal in a satis- 



200 Appendix II. 

factory manner with the matters which interest 
the public. Consequently with the view of 
protecting the great interests of general peace, 
and of remedying the abuses above pointed 
out, the Prince and the Members of the Yamen 
have the honor to submit for your Excellency's 
examination, a plan of Regulation in eight Ar- 
ticles, which has also been communicated to 
the Representatives of other Powers. 

Draft of Regulations. 

article I. 

The Christians when they found an Orphan- 
age give no notice to the authorities, and appear 
to act with mystery : hence the suspicions and 
hatred of the people. In ceasing to receive 
children, the evil rumours which are now in cir- 
culation would at the same time disappear. 
If, however, there is a wish to continue this 
work, only the children of necessitous Chris- 
tians must be received, and then the authorities 
ought to be informed, who would note the day 
on which the child entered, the name of its 
parents, and the day on which it left. It would 



Appendix IL 201 

also be necessary that power should be given 
to strangers to adopt these children, and then 
a good result would be arrived at. Lastly, 
when it is a question of non-Christian children, 
the high officials ought to give orders to the 
local authorities, who should select proper 
agents who could take all the measures which 
appeared suitable to them. 

In China the laws which regulate orphanages 
are : that on the entrance and on the departure 
of the children note is made of the person who 
leaves them, or of the person who adopts them, 
of the declaration made to the authorities, and 
of the permission given to the parents to visit 
their children. When they have become bigger, 
they may be adopted by someone having no 
children, or taken back by the parents them- 
selves, and then no matter in what religion they 
have been brought up, they return to the reli- 
gions of their fathers. The child ought in 
everything also to be treated well. In exercis- 
ing this work of charity, it becomes a most 
worthy work. 

We have heard it said that in every country 
matters are conducted in this respect very 



202 Appendix IL 

nearly as in China. How does it happen that, 
once arrived in our country, foreigners no longer 
follow these customs ? They take no note of 
the family to which the child belongs, and they 
do not give notice to the authorities. Once 
the child has entered the house other persons 
are not allowed to adopt it, nor are the parents 
permitted to take it back again, nor even to 
visit it. All this nourishes suspicions and ex- 
cites the hatred of the people, and by degrees 
a case like that of Tientsin is arrived at. Al- 
though we have denied in a report all those 
rumours of the tearing out of eyes and hearts, 
the people, however, still preserve doubts on 
the subject, and even if we succeed In closing 
their lips we cannot drive away these doubts 
from their minds. It is this kind of uneasiness 
which gives rise to terrible events. It would 
be a good thing to abolish the foreign orphan- 
ages, and to transport them to Europe, where 
they could practise their charity at their ease : 
it would then belong to the Chinese to come 
to the aid of these children. Besides, in every 
province we have numerous orphanages, and 
yet the foreigners wish to lend us at any price 



Appendix TL 203 

an assistance of which we have not the slightest 
need. It is certainly with good intentions they 
thus act, but it is not the less true that their 
conduct produces suspicion and excites anger. 
It would be far preferable if each one exercised 
his charity in his own country, and then no 
lamentable event could arise. 

article 1. 

Women ought no longer to enter the 
churches, nor should sisters of charity live in 
China to teach religion. This measure will 
only render the Christians more respectable, 
and will result in silencing evil rumours. 

In China good reputation and modesty are 
most important matters : men and women are 
not even allowed to shake hands, nor to live 
together : there ought to be a kind of line of 
separation that cannot be overstepped. After 
the treaty full liberty was given to the Chris- 
tians, and then men and women went together 
to church : hence rumours among the public. 
There are some places even where men and 
women are together not only at church but also 
in the interior of the house. The pubJic look- 



204 Appendix TL 

ing at this in a light manner harbours suspicions, 
and thinks that things contrary to propriety 
take place. 



The missionaries residing in China must 
conform to the laws and customs of China. 
They are not permitted to place themselves in 
a kind of exceptional independence, to show 
themselves recalcitrant to the authority of the 
Government and of the officials, to attribute 
to themselves powers which do not belong to 
them, to injure the reputation of men, to 
oppress the people, to asperse the doctrine of 
Confucius, by which they give ground for the 
suspicions, the resentments and the indignation 
of the masses. The missionaries must submit 
themselves, like everybody, to the authority 
of the local officials ; and the Christian Chinese 
must, in every case, be treated according to 
the common law ; with the exception of the 
expenses of theatrical solemnities and of the 
worship of local protecting divinities from 
which they are dispensed from contributing to, 
the Christians cannot escape the requisitions 



Appendix H. 205 

and forced labour, and are constrained to 
accept, like everybody else, the charges im- 
posed by the local administration. With 
stronger reason they cannot refuse to pay, in 
their integrity, the land taxes and the rents, 
nor can the missionaries advise them and sup- 
port them in infringing the common lawf 
Cases for litigation between Christians and 
non-Christians are under the equitable jurisdic- 
tion of the authorities, and cannot be left to 
the patronage of the missionaries. The latter 
cannot keep away from the courts, Christians, 
prosecutors or defendants, which, in a trial, 
leads to delays and prejudices the parties in- 
terested. In the cases in which missionaries 
allow themselves to be mixed up in affairs 
beyond their province, the local authorities 
ought to send their verbal or written communi- 
cations to the high provincial functionaries, 
who will refer them in their turn to the Tsung- 
li Yamen, in order that a decision may be 
eventually taken as to the repatriation of these 
same missionaries. In the cases where Chris- 
tians in suits respecting matrimonial alliances 
or property in land plume themselves on their 



206 Appendix DL 

position of Christians to invoke the interven- 
tion of the missionaries, they will be severely 
punished by the authorities. 

China honours the religion of Confucius ; 
that of Buddha and of Tao, as well as the 
doctrine of the Lamas is also professed there. 
Therefore it is contrary to usage that the latter, 
although they may not be Chinese, should 
ignore the decisions of the Chinese authorities, 
by approving or blaming them. We hear it 
said that the missionaries in foreign countries 
are subject to the legislation of the country in 
which they live, and that they are forbidden to 
make themselves independent, to contravene 
the law, to usurp authority, to attack the 
character of people, or to prejudice them, or 
to arouse the suspicion and resentment of the 
people. Similarly the missionaries, who teach 
their religion in China, ought to submit them- 
selves to the authority of the magistrates of 
this country ; nevertheless they are vauntingly 
independent and do not recognise the authority 
of the officials. Do they not thus place them- 
selves without the pale of the law ? The 
Christians in China remain Chinese subjects, 



Appendix IL 207 

and are only the more constrained to remain 
faithful to their duties. In no case can indiffer- 
ence be established between them and the rest 
of the nation. The Christians in the towns 
and in the country ought to live in good 
harmony with their fellow countrymen. Yet, 
in matters affecting the public when popular 
subscriptions are opened or forced labour re- 
quired, they put forward their position as 
Christians to escape these burdens. They 
themselves create an exception (in their favour). 
How avoid that the rest of the nation accept 
this exception (against them) ? Yet more, 
they refuse the taxes and forced labour, they 
intimidate the officials, they oppress those who 
do not belong to their religion. The foreign 
missionaries do not fully understand the situa- 
tion : not only do they give an asylum to 
Christians who are guilty of crimes and refuse 
to deliver them up to justice, but they also 
consent to protect unjustly those who have 
only become converts because they have com- 
mitted some crime. In the provinces the 
Missionaries make themselves the advocates be- 
fore the local authorities of the Christians who 



208 Appendix TL 

have suits. Witness that Christian woman of 
Sze-chuen who exacted from her tenants pay- 
ments of a nature which were not due to her, 
and ultimately committed a murder. A French 
bishop took upon himself to address a despatch 
to the authorities in order to plead for this 
woman and procured her acquittal. This deed 
aroused animosities among the people of Sze- 
chuen which have lasted to this day. In 
Kwei-chow, * Christians who go to law style 
themselves Christians in the charge sheet 
(" acte d'accusation ") with the sole view of 
gaining their causef This is a well-known 
abuse. It happens also that two families being 
united by matrimonial ties, one is converted 
to Christianity, then compels the other who is 
not converted to break off the alliance. 
Among people of the same blood one has 
seen fathers and older brothers, after having 
been converted lay an accusation for non-ful- 
filment of family duties against their children 
and younger brothers, for the sole reason that 
these latter had refused to be converted. These 
acts are encouraged by the missionaries. Are 
not such practices of a nature to excite to the 
highest degree the popular indignation ? 



Appendix TL 209 



ARTICLE 4. 

Chinese and foreigners living together ought 
to be governed by the same laws. For example, 
if a man kills another, he ought to be punished, 
if a Chinaman, according to the Chinese law ; 
if he is a foreigner, according to the law of his 
country. In thus acting, order will reign ; it 
matters little the manner in which the Chinese 
or foreigners treat the case ; a punishment is 
all that is necessary. But that punishment 
once inflicted, they must not come and claim 
indemnities, and above all they must not seek 
the soi-disant abettor of the crime to exact 
from him a certain sum. It belongs to the 
local authorities to adjudicate on the differences 
which may arise between the Christians and 
the people. If it is a Pagan who has com- 
mitted wrongs against a Christian, he ought to 
be punished more or less severely, according 
to the gravity of the fault ; similarly if it is a 
question of a Christian accused by a Pagan. 
The official ought to adjudicate with the most 
perfect justice, and the greatest impartiality. 

If a Christian conducts himself altogether 



210 Appendix IL 

contrary to the laws, the local authority takes 
evidence ; and if some one accuses this Chris- 
tian, the latter is seized and judged. But the 
missionaries must not then come forward to 
defend him, and to exculpate him. If the 
case arises of a missionary preventing a Chris- 
tian giving himself up to the commands of the 
authority, the Christian alone ought not to be 
punished, but also the missionary, or at least 
he ought to be sent back to his own country. 

In the sixth year of the reign of T c ung Chih, 
a missionary, M. Mabileau, was killed in Sze- 
chuen. The murderer, named Yang Lao-wu, 
was arrested and condemned to death. But 
besides that, Mr. Mihieres accused a man who 
formed part of the class of literates of having 
been the instigator of that murder, in order to 
exact from him an indemnity of 80,000 taels. 

The individuals who commit disorders ordi- 
narily belong to the lowest, classes of the 
people. When they are guilty of some crime, 
they are seized and punished ; but accusations 
ought not to be brought against the literates 
to exact from them large indemnities. Such 
conduct excites hatred. 



Appendix IL 211 

In the eighth year of the reign of T c ung 
Chih, a missionary, Mr. Rigaud, was killed in 
Sze-chuen ; the cause of the murder was an 
alliance between two families, which fell through. 
The Tartar General Ch c ung and the Governor 
General Li judged this case. They caused the 
murderer of Mr. Rigaud to be arrested, a man 
named Ho-tsai, and the murderer of a Chris- 
tian named Liang-fu, both belonging to the 
lowest class. One was condemned to have his 
head cut off, the other to be hanged. The 
Christians further killed some of the people ; 
every year there were conflicts between credi- 
tors and debtors, rapes and fires. 

The instigators of all this were Wang Hsiao- 
ting, Ch c ang Tien-hsing, and others. It was 
desired to seize and punish them, but they did 
not surrender themselves to the commands of 
the authority. Further, the Christians again, 
under the leadership of a priest named Tan 
Fu-ch c en, killed Chao Yung-lin, and 200 other 
persons. The surrender of this missionary was 
demanded ; but the Abbe Mihieres said that 
he had left for Europe ; and that there was no 
means of arranging this case. Hence great 
anger among the inhabitants of Sze-chuen. 



iii Appendix II. 

ARTICLE 5. 

The passports given to the (French) mis- 
sionaries who penetrate into the interior ought 
clearly to bear mention of the province and of 
the prefecture where they intend to repair. 
The names and titles of the bearer, and these 
conditions, that he will not be able clandestinely 
to betake himself to another province and that 
the passport is personal, will be equally com- 
prised in this document. ^ The missionary 
ought not to pass through the Custom House 
and toll-bar contraband articles of merchan- 
dize which are liable to duty. On his arrival 
at a destination other than that designated in 
the passport, or if this document has been 
handed over to a Christian Chinaman with the 
object of making him pass himself off as a mis- 
sionary, the said passport shall be cancelled. 
On the other hand, if it be ascertained that the 
bearer has gained possession of it by pecuniary 
payment, or that he has committed some other 
serious breach of the law, the individual who 
shall have thus falsely assumed the position of 
a missionary shall be punished, and the real 



Appendix DL 213 

missionary shall be sent back to his own 
country. In order that the control may be 
exercised everywhere, the name of the mis- 
sionary shall be inserted in the passport, in 
Chinese characters, which will be taken as 
proof. The passport shall be cancelled in 
cases where the titulary should have gone back 
to his own country, should have died, or 
should have abandoned missionary work. 
Passports will not be granted in the provinces 
where there are rebels, nor even hereafter for 
those where the Imperial army is operating, — 
with the evident object of securing loyally the 
safeguard of the missionaries. 

In support of the above scheme the Yamen 
will recall a missionary case which occurred in 
Kwei-chow where a certain Chao acted as mis- 
sionary, albeit his name had no place in the 
passport register. The Yamen received a 
letter on this subject from Mr. Interpreter 
Deveria, in which the latter showed how, ac- 
cording to an old French register, the mur- 
dered missionary Chao had received a pass- 
port, dated the 2nd day of the 6th month of 
the 4th year of T c ung-chih, in which he was 



214 Appendix TL 

called Jui-Lo-ssu ; that his name of Chao was 
erroneous ; that the victim was really the said 
Jui-Lo-ssu ; that, on the other hand, the same 
Jui-Lo-ssu was inserted under number 325 as 
going to Sze-chuen and thence to Kwei-chow. 
However, the Yamen was able to convince it- 
self that neither this name of Chao nor that of 
Jui-Lo-ssu figured on its passport register. 
There was, therefore, a double mistake in the 
name of the missionary and in that of his resi- 
dence. How, then, could one establish an 
identity and secure to the party interested 
efficacious protection ? 

There was also an affair of murder com- 
mitted by the missionary Splingaert on the 
person of a Russian. This Splingaert was first 
of all a missionary, then entered the Prussian 
Legation as constable. He none the less re- 
tained his passport, so that he handed it over 
to some one else, or lost it, so that not only 
an abuse, in passing as a missionary, occurred, 
but grave inconveniences to public affairs might 
have arisen in case the said passport had fallen 
into the hands of rebels. On the other hand, 
the dignity of missionaries seems to us to be 
seriously injured by such irregularities. 



Appendix II. 215 

ARTICLE 6. 

The aim of the missionaries being to exhort 
men to virtue, it is befitting that before admit- 
ting an individual to the privileges of religion, 
he should be examined as to whether he has 
undergone any sentence or committed any 
crime. If this examination be in his favour 
he may become a Christian ; if the contrary he 
should not be allowed to become one. One 
ought, moreover, to act as the ministers of our 
religion do, who give notice to the inspectors 
of ten families, and cause the name of the per- 
son to be entered in the register with this pur- 
pose. In the same way the missionaries ought 
to give notice to the authorities, who will take 
note of the day of the month and of the year 
of admittance, of the country, and of the 
station in life of the individual, and will ascer- 
tain if he has ever undergone any sentence, or 
if he has ever changed his name. By acting 
thus all confusion will be avoided. If a Chris- 
tian should be sent on a mission, and he should 
die on the way, notice should be given to the 
proper authority. If, after being converted, a 



216 Appendix II. 

person commits some crime, he should be dis- 
missed, and no longer regarded as belonging to 
the religion. Every month, or at least every 
three months, the authorities ought to be in- 
formed of the number of conversions. The 
authorities also should act as they do in regard 
to our temples, that is to say, they should go 
every month, or at least every three months, 
to inspect the missions. This course will do 
no harm to religion, but, on the contrary, will 
ensure tranquillity. 

In the ninth year of the reign of T c ung Chih, 
the Government of Kwei-chow gave notice to 
the Yamen that at Kwei-ting-hsien some peo- 
ple, who were formerly nothing better than 
thieves, were forming a part of a militia of 
which the Christians, Yuan Yu-hsiang and 
Hsia Chen-hsing,' were the leaders. Passing 
themselves off as Christians, these men were 
highly thought of; however, they committed 
all sorts of disturbances, killed Wang Chiang- 
pao and Tso Yin-shu, seriously wounded three 
other persons, and carried off from the houses 
not only money, but also all the objects which 
they contained, even down to the very cattle. 



Appendix II, 217 

In the eighth year of the reign of T'ung Chih 
the Governor of Kwei-chow again warned our 
Yamen that at Tsun Yi-hsien a petition had 
been addressed, with the object of declaring 
that some rebels, of whom the leaders were 
Sun Yu-shan, T c ang Shen-hsien, T c ang Yuan- 
shuai, Chien Yuen-shuai, had embraced the 
Catholic religion, and that they still continued 
within and without the town to stir up inde- 
scribable and countless disturbances and trou- 
bles. In the same place, also, some people 
named Yang Hsi-po, Liu Kai-wen, Ching 
Hsiao-ming, Ho Wen-chiu, Chao Wen-an had 
embraced the Catholic religion, and were even 
employed in the interior of the mission. How- 
ever, outside they practised all sorts of exac- 
tions upon the orphans, and intimidated those 
who were poor in spirit. They were perpetu- 
ally to the Yamen, and undertook to regulate 
the trials. In an affair between a Christian and 
a countryman, if the mandarin administered 
justice to the latter, they collected the Chris- 
tians, invaded the Yamen, and forced the au- 
thorities to reverse the sentences. If, in spite 
of that, the mandarin would not give the 



2i 8 Appendix TL 

Christian up to them, they returned with the 
card of a missionary, and claimed on his behalf 
the liberty of their friend. 

Besides, they committed all sorts of attempts 
upon persons and properties; if resistance was 
offered them, they struck blows and did not 
even fear to kill, and were guilty besides of 
many other crimes. 

article 7. 

The missionaries ought to observe Chinese 
customs, and to deviate from them in no re- 
spect ; for instance, they ought not to make 
use of seals, the use of which is reserved for 
functionaries alone. It is not allowed them to 
send despatches to a Yamen, whatever may be 
their importance. If, however, for an urgent 
matter it should be absolutely necessary to 
write, they may do it ; but taking good care 
not to speak of matters beyond the subject, 
and making use like people belonging to the 
class of literates, of the Ping-tieh (petition). 
When the missionaries visit a great mandarin, 
they must observe the same ceremonies as 
those exacted from the literates ; if they visit a 



Appendix IL 219 

mandarin of inferior rank, they must also con- 
form to the customary ceremonies. They 
must not unceremoniously go into the Yamens 
and bring disorder and confusion into the 
affair. 

In the sixth year of the reign of T'ung Chih 
the Governor of Sze-chuen wrote to us that 
the French Bishop, Monseigneur Pinchon, 
had, in a letter which he sent to the authorities, 
made use of an official seal manufactured by 
himself. 

In the seventh year of the reign of T c ung 
Chih, Monseigneur Faurie, 1 Bishop of Kwei- 
chow, handed to the officer charged with the 
remission of the letters of the Government, a 
despatch to the address of the Yamen to ask 
that marks of distinction should be accorded to 
a Taoutae called To Wen, and to other per- 
sons besides. 

In Shan-tung a missionary passed himself 
off as Hsiun-fu (Provincial Governor). 

In Sze-chuen and Kwei-chow missionaries 
took upon themselves to demand the recall 'of 
mandarins who had not arranged their affairs to 

1 Mentioned as Faure, p. 86. 



iio Appendix II. 

their satisfaction. So it is not only the author- 
ity of simple functionaries that they assume ; 
they claim, further, a power which the Sover- 
eign alone possesses. After such acts how 
could general indignation fail to be aroused? 

article 8. 

Missionaries shall not be allowed to claim, 
as belonging to the church, the property which 
it may please them to designate; in this way no 
difficulty will arise. If the missionaries wish to 
buy a portion of land on which to build a 
church, or hire a house in which to take up 
their residence, they must, before concluding 
the bargain, go with the real proprietor and 
make a declaration to the local authority who 
will examine whether the Feng-shui presents 
any obstacle. If the official decides that no 
inconvenience arises from the Feng-shui, it will 
then be necessary to ask the consent of the in- 
habitants of the place. These two formalities 
fulfilled, it will be necessary besides, in the 
text of the contract, to follow the ruling pub- 
lished in the fourth year of the reign of T c ung- 
chih, that is to say, to declare that' the land 



Appendix JL 221 

belongs with full rights to Chinese Christians. 
It will not be allowed in the purchase of prop- 
erties to make a transfer making use of another 
name than that of the real purchaser ; it will 
also be forbidden to make this transfer in man- 
ner contrary to law, following the advice of 
dishonest people. 

The missionaries residing constantly in 
China must strive to inspire confidence, so as 
not to excite the discontent and aversion of the 
people ; but on the contrary to live on good 
terms with them without ever exciting suspi- 
cion. At this moment there is almost always 
discord between the two parties, and the cause 
of it is the conduct of the Christians. So as 
regards the property of the church, there have 
been claims during these last years in all the 
provinces, and the missionaries exact the res- 
titution, without troubling themselves as to 
whether it wounds the susceptibility of the 
people or is injurious to their interests. Be- 
sides there are fine houses belonging to the 
literates that they claim, and expel the pro- 
prietor from them at the shortest notice. But 
what is worst, and what wounds the dignity of 



222 Appendix II. 

the people, is that they often claim as their 
property Yamens, places of assembly, temples 
held in high respect by the literates and the 
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. 

Certainly, in each province are houses which 
formerly belonged to the Church ; but note 
must be taken of the number of years which 
have passed since, and it must be remem- 
bered that Christians sold these houses, and 
that they have, perhaps, passed through 
the hands of several proprietors. It must 
also be remembered that the house was, per- 
haps, old and dilapidated when sold, and that 
the purchaser has, perhaps, incurred great 
expense in repairs, or has even built a new 
one. The missionaries take no account of 
all this, they exact a restitution, and do not 
even offer the least indemnity. Sometimes 
they even ask for repairs to be made, or if not, 
for a sum of money. Such conduct excites 
the indignation of the people, who look with 
no favourable eye on the missionaries. Such 
being the case no friendship can exist. 

The facts that are stated in this Memoran- 
dum have been chosen as examples among 



Appendix II. 223 

many others to demonstrate what is irregular 
in the acts of the missionaries, and to prove 
the impossibility of Christians and non-Chris- 
tians living harmoniously. 

It is urgent, therefore, to seek a remedy for 
the evil ; both one and the other will find it to 
their advantage, and it will obviate this sole 
question of the missions becoming fatal to the 
great interests of peace between China and the 
West. 

We do not attempt to enumerate the many 
matters which are agitating in the provinces. 
The object is to separate the tares from the 
good grain, to punish the wicked in the inter- 
est of the good. With respect to commerce, 
for instance, merchants guilty of dishonesty 
are severely punished in order to protect the 
honour of commerce in general. From the 
time that the missionaries admit every one, 
without taking care to distinguish between the 
good and the bad, these last pour into the 
Christian community, and relying on the sup- 
port of the missionaries molest people of 
property and despise the authority of the 
magistrates." Under these conditions the re- 



224 Appendix II. 

sentment of the multitude grows deep. If 
the entire Chinese people should, like the 
inhabitants of Tientsin, come to detest for- 
eigners, the supreme authority itself could no 
longer be able to interpose efficaciously. Such 
are the dangers which the present situation 
implies. 

The rules which we now propose are the 
last expression of our firm will to protect the 
missionaries, and have nothing in their import 
hostile to them. If they sincerely endeavour 
to conform themselves to them, good harmony 
might be maintained ; if, on the other hand, 
the missionaries consider these same rules in 
the light of attempts upon their independence, 
or contrary to their rites, they may cease to 
preach their religion in China. The Chinese 
government treats its Christian and its non- 
Christian subjects on a footing of perfect 
equality; that is the evident proof that it is 
not opposed to the work of the missions. In 
return, the missionaries, allowing themselves 
to be duped by the Christians, do not adhere 
faithfully to their duties. From this state of 
things a hatred of the masses must result, 



Appendix IL 225 

which it will be very difficult to combat, and 
a general overthrow of order, which will make 
all protection an impossibility. It would be 
far better from henceforth to speak the truth 
frankfully. 



APPENDIX III. 



*H 



SUMMARY OF THE CHING-SHIH-WEN- 
SHU-PIEN 1 , OR "BLUE BOOKS." 

RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDISM : ONE OF THE MOST 

IMPORTANT POINTS AS REGARDS INTERCOURSE WITH 

FOREIGNERS. 

By LI PENG-YUAN. 

It is our opinion that foreign missionaries 
are in very truth the source whence springs all 
trouble in China. Foreigners corne to China 
from a distance of several ten thousands of 
miles and from about ten different countries 
with only two objects in view, namely trade and 
religious propagandism. With the former they 
intend to gradually deprive China of her wealth, 
and with the latter they likewise seek to steal 
away the hearts of her people. The ostensible 

1 This is the work referred to on pp. 64 and 137, as " King- 
sz-wen." 

226 



Appendix IIL 227 

pretext they put forward is the cultivation of 
friendly relations ; what their hidden' purpose 
is, is unfathomable, but the fact remains that 
trouble between Christian converts and the 
common people is for ever cropping up. 

Originally the nations of the West had only 
one religion, that of Christ ; but this one reli- 
gion has now divided itself into three ; that of 
Jesus (Protestants), that of the Lord of Heaven 
(Roman Catholics), and that known as "Hsila" 
(Hellenic or Greek Church). The character- 
istic to these religions of theirs is that whether 
united or divided, whether in prosperity or in 
adversity, their missionaries must go abroad 
throughout the world and endeavour to con- 
vert men to their religion and lead them to fol- 
low in their path. Now that China has given 
permission to foreigners to proclaim their doc- 
trines she must according to treaty extend them 
her protection, but wherever missionaries go 
they ought to be subject to the local authori- 
ties and not mix themselves up with public 
affairs. It is unfortunately the case that evilly 
disposed natives of China constantly rely on 
the protection which their conversion to the 



228 Appendix EL 

foreign religion affords them,^and on the 
strength thereof they commit every kind of 
base and illegal action. They impose on the 
more simple minded of their fellow villagers, 
they insult and oppress the orphans and the 
weak, they forcibly abduct the wives of others, 
they take violent possession of land which is 
not their own, they make difficulties about pay- 
ing rent due to their landlord, they defiantly 
decline in open court to contribute their pro- 
portion of legal taxes, they raise a quarrel about 
some public matter and then seek to throw the 
blame on others, and on account of some pri- 
vate disagreement they go even to the length 
of beating and murdering peaceable citizens. 
Every sort of crime can be laid to their charge, 
and it would be difficult to draw up a complete 
list of their transgressions. The missionaries 
without sufficient knowledge of the real facts 
of the case, and deceived by their ex parte state- 
ments, are in the habit of coming forward as 
their protectors and openly assisting them. **It 
often happens that they hide away the defend- 
ant in a suit in order that he may not appear 
in court, and in certain instances when the guilt 



Appendix DDL 229 

of an offender has been conclusively proved 
and his punishment decided on, they in the 
most public manner have connived at his get- 
ting away to a foreign country, with the result 
that he is not to be had and the case remains 
in abeyance. 

Many officials, moreover, induced by a dread 
of complications, act from the beginning with 
too excreme caution, and in ignorance of for- 
eign laws are glad to compromise a case any- 
how. The result is that justice is never done, 
and the people always have a grievance. Nat- 
urally, as causes for complaint accumulate, the 
spirit of resentment waxes stronger day by day, 
and a desire for revenge is created, which cul- 
minates in the destruction of Chapels and the 
ill-treatment of missionaries, and feuds be- 
tween missionary converts and their neighbours 
go on increasing. Although of course the 
high authorities concerned take steps to arrange 
these matters, they are for the greater part far 
removed from the scene of action, and but im- 
perfectly acquainted with the hidden details ; 
and as it often happens that their respective 
laws differ, each holds firmly to his own opin- 



230 Appendix DL 

ion, and the settlement of the case becomes 
more complicated and protracted. They (i.e., 
the foreigners), however, are in the habit of 
resorting to force, and using all manner of in- 
timidation, press their point, so that even 
after the principal offenders have been pun- 
ished, they claim compensation for the de- 
stroyed property, and even after the officials 
have lost their posts they, on the strength of 
these occurrences, clamour for the opening of 
more ports — proceedings contrary to all prin- 
ciples of right and justice, and utterly opposed 
to treaty stipulations. 

The nature of the situation calls for the 
adoption of some satisfactory agreement to be 
observed by both sides which will conduce 
towards the maintenance of peaceful relations 
for the future. 

Now, no Chinese subject at all cognizant of 
right and justice or in any way imbued with a 
spirit of virtue would allow himself to be led 
away by these doctrines of theirs. Those who 
do become converts are either so actuated by 
mercenary motives that they have lost all self- 
respect, or are labouring under some hallucina- 



Appendix HI. 231 

tion which they have not been able to throw 
off; they are either evilly disposed persons 
who want influence on their side or criminals 
who seek to escape justice. They must in the 
first instance have a contempt for law and 
order ere they would dare to rebel thus against 
reason and true principles. 

Again, although the missionaries are foreign- 
ers, their converts still remain Chinese subjects, 
and a large enough concession forsooth has 
been made to the spirit of friendliness and 
toleration in allowing the missionaries to carry 
on religious propagandism at all, without up- 
holding their converts against the rest of the 
people. Surely it is not our wish to first force 
the whole nation to embrace their doctrines 
and then clap our hand for joy ! Such a 
calamity would be too deep for words. 

For the future the name of every convert 
should be entered on a list held by the local 
authorities and communicated to the Consul 
concerned ; and each convert should have the 
two characters " Chiao-min " inserted on his 
" men-p c ai," (i.e., the slip of paper on each 
house door describing the inmates). There 



232 Appendix IIL 

should also be some distinction of dress, and 
if any dispute arise it ought to be decided 
according to Chinese law by the local authori- 
ties, the Consul sitting as assessor. The 
missionary ought not to be allowed to protect 
the criminal in any way. Should the defendant 
prior to his being arraigned not have his name 
on the list above mentioned he is not to be 
considered a convert, and will be dealt with by 
the local authorities as they see fit, the mission- 
ary of course in such a case having less than 
ever to do with the proceedings. 

Should any missionary mix himself up with 
any public matter or resort to intimidation in 
any way some severe punishment must be 
meted out to him, and his Minister be imme- 
diately requested to have him sent back to his 
own country "four encourager les autres" 

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